Posts tagged ‘Capitalism_Kapitalizam’

04. srpnja 2011

Svi smo rođeni kapitalisti

autora/ice cronomy

Kao što svaki roditelj vjerojatno vrlo dobro zna “moje” je i prečesta riječ djece u predškolskoj dobi – 2 do 5 godina. I to ne bez razloga. Vlasništvo je najvažnije u toj dobi i djeca dobro razumiju ideju vlasništva. Možda i pre dobro pošto roditeljii uglavno uče djecu kada i kako dijeliti i posuditi.

Nova studija dvoje psihologa sa Sveučilišta Waterloo pokazuje da djeca imaju snažan osjećaj privatnog vlasništva i vlasničkih prava koji nije naučen već dio ljudske prirode od ranih godina.

… psychologist Ori Friedman of the University of Waterloo in Canada reported on May 28 at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting. At ages 4 and 5, youngsters value a person’s ownership rights — say, to a crayon — far more strongly than adults do, Friedman and psychology graduate student Karen Neary found.

Rather than being learned from parents, a concept of property rights may automatically grow out of 2- to 3-year-olds’ ideas about bodily rights, such as assuming that another person can’t touch or control one’s body for no reason, Friedman proposed. …

Friedman’s team presented a simple quandary to 40 preschoolers, ages 4 and 5, and to 44 adults. Participants saw an image of a cartoon boy holding a crayon who appeared above the word “user” and a cartoon girl who appeared above the word “owner.” After hearing from an experimenter that the girl wanted her crayon back, volunteers were asked to rule on which cartoon child should get the prized object.

About 75 percent of 4- and 5-year-olds decided in favor of the owner, versus about 20 percent of adults.

What’s clear is that learning apparently plays little role in early thinking about possessions, Friedman asserted. “A concept of ownership rights may be a product of the way we naturally think early in life,” he said.

Za još jedan zanimljiv blogerski osvrt vidi ovdje.

Friedmanova osobna stranica.

19. svibnja 2009

Ekonomski PR problem (za ljevičare pogotovo)

autora/ice cronomy

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.

…..

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!”

filthy_lucreHe 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.

Čitajte dalje ovdje. Knjigu razgledajte ovdje.

%d blogeri kao ovaj: