Simplification, and often oversimplification, is an unfortunate necessity of any sort of social analysis. In economic analysis, we often group individuals into one of two categories: supply or demand, ignoring gender, age, race, religion, or any of the multitude of differences that may be embodied by these individuals. There are many problems with this sort of oversimplification of variables, which can lead to misguided theories, misinformed public policy, social unrest, etc.
One big part of the problem is the often vague definitions given to these variables. I touched on this issue in one of my previous comments. What exactly do we mean by "the economy"? What is "value" and how should we measure it? What does it really mean to be "productive"? Growth, equilibrium, efficiency, maximization - all these words are taught, talked about, written about, and absorbed with little to no thought about their definitions and real life applications. The article for next week explores the definition of economic growth and whether it is a good thing or even possible in the long run. As we work on making economic analysis more real and pragmatic, we need to come up with more real and precise definitions or what and how we are analyzing society.
There are several interesting articles/books that comment on this issue. One is an article by Clifford Cobb titled, "IfThe GDP Is Up Why Are We So Down". It examines what factors we choose to count as "economic" in our measure of GDP and what is being left out that maybe should be included. There is a book by Herman Daly titled "Beyond Growth"that deals with the distinction between growth and development, as well as other pertinent issues concerning the environment (Felipe, I never got to thank you for recommending this to me last year. Thanks!). There are various works of philosophy that deal with the issue of value and how to define it. I'm no philosophy expert, so I don't have any specific recommendations (Elena, could you help me out here?)
I apologize if this post came out jumbled or slightly incoherent. Lack of sleep plus sugar high does not equal intelligible blogging...
TGIF
Sean
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2 comments:
Does changing our measure of value result in a real reallocation of priorities? It seems that such meeasures would only work in very particular types of economies (most of which would be very centralized) or in splinter communes. Obviously sustainability is beginning to work its way into mainstream rhetoric, but will current economic structures ever value it? Or do we simply have to overthrow shit in order to achieve these types of goals?
Altering what is assigned value would result in a reallocation of priorities/resources/etc. For example, if environmental concerns were given proper value or future costs were appropriately weighted, it would affect the market outcomes. The market only works with things which we give "value" to - as Cobb highlights in his article. As to how we can change society's conception of value, I wish I knew. I'm always caught in between patiently working for sustainable change and wanting to "overthrow shit" in utter frustration...
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