Da ekonomisti i njihova znanost imaju problem u odnosu sa i utjecajem na javnost i političare je već poznato. “Zašto” argumenata ima više, iako ključni razlozi nisu još kristalno jasni. Jedan od argumenta je i predpostavka osobnog-interesa kao niti vodilje u odlučivanju. Ljevica to odmah izjednačava sa sebičnošću, stvara perverziju od čitave predpostavke. Tu dolazi do odvraćanja od ekonomskog načina razmišljanja za javnost i akademsku ljevicu. Nick Rowe na svom blogu i u svom pregledu knjige Filthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism Josepha Heath,a ima zanimljivu diskusiju o tome.
Heath, imenjak, mladi jeprofesor filozofije na Sveučilištu Toronto. Čuo sam samo pohvale za par njegovih knjiga, ali nisam uspio pročitati niti jednu do sada iako zvuče prilično zanimljivo. Ova neće pasti u tu kategoriju. Ipak, pošto je nisam pročitao ne znam koliko je dostupna jednom istočno europskom polit-ekonomskom miljeu. Po podnaslovu reklo bi se da definitivno jest, i to pronto. Određene lekcije sigurno razjašnjavaju određene probleme kako u Sj. i Ju. Americi, tako i u Istočnoj Europi.
Why do we need a philosophy professor to explain economics to capitalist-hating lefties? Why are we failing to do it ourselves? I asked him this question, and he gave two answers.
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His second answer, speaking more generally from the experience of those who approach economics from the left of the political spectrum, was a less familiar complaint. The assumption of self-interest, usually introduced very early in the teaching of economics, is a real turn-off for lefties especially. Their reaction is: “Economics is based on the assumption that everyone acts selfishly; well that’s obviously false, as well as bad, so I might as well ignore this rubbish!”
He argues that though there is economic illiteracy on the right, economic illiteracy on the left, especially left-wing intellectuals who ought to know better, is much deeper ingrained. He blames the self-interest assumption for this.
Joseph Heath’s own views on the selfishness assumption are nuanced. He believes that people can and do act for other than selfish reasons, but getting them to act this way in certain contexts takes a lot of coaching. His answer to the Coasian question of the boundaries between firms and markets rests on the tension between this coaching people to play for the team and giving their self-interest free-rein. (Read the book if you want to know more).
My own take is that what is key to economics is not selfishness, but the assumption that different people want different things. If we all wanted the same thing (i.e. exactly the same allocation of resources), there would be no conflict, most of the “economic problem” of scarcity and choice would be reduced to production engineering, and there simply wouldn’t be very much for economists to talk about.
If all people were perfect altruists, who also shared all values, we would all want the same thing. Any other case will almost certainly result in some conflict from different people wanting different things, so we might as well call it “self-interest”, even if it isn’t.
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Cronomy.org 