Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 15, 2007 12:53:06 PM
Truth Teller posts a blog about the Noble Prize winners in economics who take the social costs of capitalism into consideration. The interesting thing about economics and economiists is the discoveries they continually make that changes broad economic theory. Of course liberals have stressed "externatlities" for some time in our critique of conservatives rhetoric about capitalism. But its also of interest that economists continually discover things that the average person has known forever. I think it's been just a few years since economists began formally recognizing that emotions play a great part in the values people have and the economic decisions they make and that has become "financial economics." I read an interesting book recently about the long puzzle about why one of Adam Smith's formulations wasn't playing out in the real world, how one economist finally found the answer and that it didn't make much difference to anybody after he'd found out.
The moral of economics is that the simple description of the free market that we get from conservatives leaves much to be desired and ought not to be relied upon for policy guidance.