A Few Good Words

Tyler Cowen argues at Bloomberg that the sheer volume of "news" we must sort through to be informed modern citizens is more problematic than supposed "fake news." Readers with access to so much information about the various tragedies in our world are left jaded and cynical. Thanks to the internet, we also learn the many flaws and quirks of leaders and experts, from banal personal details on their Facebook, to their wild teenage Twitter posts, to more serious expos és about them. (Undoubtedly, Andrew Jackson's presidency would have suffered if he'd had a Twitter account). This feature of our world isn't going away anytime soon. There are loads of reasons to argue the Information Age is, on net, good for humans. Today's volume of quality reporting and available information act as a valuable check on those in power. Accountability is, generally, good.  But our oversaturated marketplace for news can clearly corrode societal trust, attention, and...

There are good reasons to call economics the "dismal science." Economists, Steven Rhoads jokes, see a bittersweet quality in the groundbreaking of a new community center. They might brood: "By spending money here and not elsewhere, we give up the mobile heart units that would save four lives a year, a remedial reading program ... [etc., etc.]" (22). This may be technically true. But isn't this view of life a little ... inhuman? Rhoads approvingly quotes Kenneth Boulding: "No one would want his daughter to marry an economic man, one who counted every cost and asked for every reward, [and] was never afflicted with mad generosity or uncalculating love" (34). Czech philosopher Zdeněk Neubauer suggests something similar when he argues "price is unholy."¹  Economists are suspicious of single-minded devotion to single goals at the expense of others. Because opportunity costs are everywhere, they will usually emphasize marginal investments in p...

I plan to re-read  The Economist's View of the World  by Steven Rhoads   this summer. First, an introduction. The Economist's View of the World is among my favorite reads on economics. Originally published in 1985, Rhoads' reflections have aged well. His work is humanistic in the best sense of the word, pausing to consider nuances of the human experience that many other economists would ignore (Chapter 3, on marginalism, reflects on a Wordsworth poem at length). For Parts I and II of the book, Rhoads defends the discipline of economics against misguided critics. In Part III, though, he suggests that the "economist's view of the world" misunderstands key elements of human life and society. The complaint that economists put too much faith in calculators and base their models on unrealistic assumptions about human nature is hardly unique to Rhoads -- it's been made frequently in books and think-pieces from all over the political and intellectual spectrum...