Ethical Addendum
In his response to my earlier comment Antonio Garrido hits upon a vital point. Let me recapitulate the story so far.
I wrote, at the very end of the comment:
“… But I do know we are headed that way, and that textbook economics is culpable for spreading market myths far enough to help destroy the opportunity it was designed to justify. It ignores balance. It ignores reality.”
To which Antonio responded:
“Yes,but what about people with knowledge and influence ( for example university teachers) that did not teach and write alternatives theories?.”
Ah. That cuts to the bone.
This seems crucial to me. It is a deep and vital issue.
Economics, by virtue of its subject matter, has enormous impact on the lives of everyday people. It is a subject that contributes to the policies designed to enhance social welfare. It is found in various guises as a component in the most commonly awarded undergraduate degree in the US. It is thus hugely influential. Real livelihoods, families, and entire communities depend on the efficacy of what is taught. Every year colleges around the world graduate hordes of young people who believe they are armed with valuable insight into the workings of the business world or the society that they seek to shape or lead in the future. They think that economics is relevant to the real world. They want be practical. They believe economics is practical. It is unequivocally not. These young people cannot be blamed for spreading the error, if one exists. They are merely deploying the skills they were taught.
It is the teachers who are to blame.
The teachers need to change. They need to claim collective responsibility for the content and outcomes of what is taught.Of course this is far from easy. But being ethical within a discipline that so far has stood apart from its ethical responsibility is not going to be easy. Being the first to say “no” never is.
And this is why Antonio’s point needs to be taken seriously.
Economics is a very fractured subject. It is riven through with varieties of viewpoints and shades of opinion. Yet the central mass that forms orthodoxy is all that is taught. It is what is accepted as being “correct”. That’s why it is orthodox. Those that teach it exercise a stranglehold on the popular textbooks. They dominate policy formation. They perpetuate themselves by restricting career advancement, professional publication, and the establishment of acceptable practice. In short they seek to enforce their orthodoxy through a monopoly. They mask all this under the rubric of science, scientific method, and the cut and thrust of academic argument.
Except they accept no argument. In an astonishing rejection of their own views, orthodox teachers preach competition whilst accepting none. They preach workforce flexibility from within the safety of tenure; and they claim to be scientific even though the existence of contrary evidence undermines what they preach.
The outside public, the ultimate consumers – perhaps I should call them victims – of economic theorizing, need to be aware of how unscientific orthodoxy is. Above all they need to be aware of the arrogance and inbred nature of the response engendered by the recent crisis. When confronted with its greatest modern challenge, orthodoxy failed. Totally. Yet in defiance of any semblance of true scientific spirit, its practitioners persist undeterred. To them the earth remains flat. To them the next experiment will turn lead into gold. To them just one more sphere will fix the earth firmly at the center of the universe.
Their error is not a subtle one. It is not amenable to a slight adjustment. On the contrary it constitutes a catastrophic fail. Pull on any one on the threads from which orthodoxy is constructed and it unravels into an impractical and irrelevant mess. It has no content nor meaning beyond what its says about itself. It has become self absorbed, self referential, and self contained. That is why I say that orthodox economists no longer study real economies, they simply study economics. Their ideas are limited only to tinkering with their models and preconceptions. They seem not to care whether their models relate in some way to the world about them.
This may sound harsh or extreme. But in the face of the size of the error, and mindful of its result, I feel compelled to raise my voice. It takes courage to recognize that a lifetime’s service and loyalty to the discipline has been in error, I would admire greatly any orthodox economist who could acknowledge such error. If you are one then please step forward. Stop working on what you have previously been doing. Start working on something that will limit the damage. Start helping to fix economics. Above all, stop teaching the error. Rebel against it.
As for the rest of us.
Enough.
Antonio is demanding a change from us too. No more can we avoid the responsibility we have to the subject, to the public, and to the millions of students taught the error each year. Our challenge is to create the space within which the alternatives to orthodoxy can not simply be perpetuated, but where they can flourish and gain center stage. That means encouraging true debate and diversity. It means accepting real competition and argument. It means being open not closed. It means seeking to change and improve, and not regurgitating the same old responses. It means including voices hitherto silenced. It means listening more than speaking. Sometimes it is aid that heterodox economists know more about orthodoxy than they do about each other’s ideas. That is unacceptable,though perhaps it is understandable since a comprehensive worldwide forum for such an exchange is yet to emerge.
What it does not mean is more of the same. We know that has not worked.
Am I being simple? Yes.
Am I idealistic? Yes.
But within the currently failed, tired, and fractured confines that constitutes modern economics I see the need for both simplicity and idealism. They provide refreshment. And hope that Antonio will no longer be able to cast an eye on us and suggest that we too are culpable for the mess wrought by economics.
Because he’s right. Thus far we have been.
