Re: Call for a NEW Economics

On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 15:50:16 -0800, "The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

><royls@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:43ab99e1.66408898@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:53:50 -0800, "The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>><royls@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>news:43aafaf3.25717006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 07:51:15 GMT, Mason C <masonc2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>2. What matters is the state of the bottom decile, not
>>>>>the average or median. (re: gdp, unemployment, etc. etc.)
>>>>
>>>> I can't imagine an empirical science founded on such a principle.
>>>> What matters in any genuine science is fact.
>>>
>>>That is why I am interested in political economy as opposed to
>>>economics. What matters is the utilitarianism.
>>
>> If you take that approach, you're conceding the epistemological high
>> ground.
>
>So lets see the results: I concede. Lets get on with it. What is wrong
>with utilitarianism so long as benefits or losses have proper weights?
>Or is weight the problem?

There's nothing wrong with it per se. We just need to keep the
normative and the scientific separate. Physics provides the facts of
mechanics, people provide the goals. The engineer applies the former
to achieve the latter: e.g., a bridge that will do whatever job the
community wants done, whether it's carrying six lanes of commuter
traffic or a bike path. The problem in economics is just that certain
facts are not congenial to the personal financial interests of the
wealthy and powerful, so those facts must be suppressed, whatever the
cost in scientific progress. This sort of problem rarely exists in
other sciences, but it is not unknown. Consider the political
interference in genetics, psychometrics, AIDS research, cloning, etc.
500 years ago it was cosmology.

-- Roy L
.