I've Been Busy

Does anybody still read this? If so, you are getting a double-dose of some things I've been working on recently.

The Formalities of Non-formal Economies

From the trading of snacks in an elementary school playground to the trafficking of people all around the world, non-formal economies are everywhere. Yet, their embedded workings remain largely invisible to formal economic analysis. These workings are neither small ($3 trillion is estimated to be laundered worldwide) nor peripheral to society (Société Générale); the non-formal overlaps and interacts with our daily formal lives. Some experts have even found that over 50 percent of the economic activity in certain countries – both developed and underdeveloped – occurs, formally uncounted, outside of formal markets. But open up any introductory economics textbook and you will find little to no mention of the deadly trade in illegal arms or the similarly deadly trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals – each amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Our blindness towards non-formal economies is a direct result of our formal education through an “old-world” point-of-view; a lack of global perspective, privileging the quantitative over qualitative, the legal/illegal dichotomy, and other conceptual afflictions form this outdated ideology. To remedy this, not only do the basic assumptions of our formal economic theories need to be revisited, but a complete reframing of our traditional worldview must be affected. Paramount in this reframing is a new conception of economics – one not disposed to narrow conceptualizations and passé ideologies. The discipline of economics prescribes itself to a formal fetish – a detrimental yet dominant conviction, masking the sea of non-formal activities lying just under the surface of our everyday economic experience. Economics isn’t just supply and demand, but, above all, represents the nexus of wealth, power, and ideology in our world. With this broader understanding, real policy, real development, and real conclusions can be met. Informed of the profit, politics, and power that drive both the economies we see and the economies we don’t, we can begin to formulate real economic theories for the contemporary world.