Here she goes again, going to bat for Adam Smith …

Well, not exactly. But teeing up Russ Roberts, in a mixed metaphor podcast repodcasting, in which he goes to bat for Adam Smith, and then discusses how academics are captured by their audience and how economists are no more free from bias than a nicely cut dress.  I found the podcast about Adam Smith charming … and the conclusion that you should try to be not just loving but lovely is not what one might expect.  And the second podcast is, while somewhat obvious, not considered nearly enough.  We say what we think people want to hear … but of course we do and the question is how to avoid crippling public policy as a result.

The halls of academia are somewhat dusty, but these are the schools that train the policy makers and I hail the polite but insistent criticism that Russ Roberts levels at the decision makers.  And Adam Smith wasn’t the monster he is portrayed as … like Keynes he has been used as a battering ram in a polarized world.  For one, he was so prolific that he is quite inconsistent, as P.J. O’Rourke delightfully examines in The Wealth of Nations, which he reads for one, because “[r]ecognized almost instantly upon its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long ….”  What’s more, Mike Munger, an all-star Econtalk guest, interviews Professor Roberts in a nice twist on an old friendship when discussing Robert’s latest book:

EconTalk host Russ Roberts is interviewed by long-time EconTalk guest Michael Munger about Russ’s new book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness. Topics discussed include how economists view human motivation and consumer behavior, the role of conscience and self-interest in acts of kindness, and the costs and benefits of judging others. The conversation closes with a discussion of how Smith can help us understand villains in movies.

Russ Roberts and Mike Munger on How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life 

Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Zingales’s essay, “Preventing Economists’ Capture.” Zingales argues that just as regulators become swayed by the implicit incentives of dealing with industry executives, so too with economists who study business: supporting business interests can be financially and professionally rewarding. Zingales outlines the different ways that economists benefit from supporting business interests and ways that economists might work to prevent that influence or at lease be aware of it.

Luigi Zingales on Incentives and the Potential Capture of Economists by Special Interests

It is amazing how I can already feel defensive, posting something positive about Adam Smith.  It is a sad thought that he has been used to defend naked greed.  It is also a sad thought that Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand were friends.  At least I think I heard that horrifying fact here, and now you can too.

Where is Thor’s hammer when you need it?

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5 Responses to Here she goes again, going to bat for Adam Smith …

  1. Dryocopus pileatus says:

    a few points so far to get things going – i am half way through Roberts being interviewed by Munger…

    i have read “Wealth of Nations” and “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, though not lately. but i too was left with the impression that Adam Smith would be horrified by what some modern economists (political hacks) attribute to his work. he did not at all believe that unrestrained self-interest led to good outcomes whether personally, or for an economy as a whole. he surely would have thought Ayn Rand and her followers to be sociopaths, though that word, not in use at the time is the modern term for those who lack any conscience.

    yes, there even is an evolutionary advantage to cooperation, and that is where i am at in the interview. the so called “social darwinists” are taking a very simple and self serving view, while bastardizing Darwin’s works also.

    also… i do not believe in the premise of “unlimited wants”. that is the goal of “marketing”, in a consumer driven economic system. it keeps people on the tread mill, that carrot forever dangling just out of grasp. it justifies the creation of billionaires, while those at the bottom cannot even find work enough to survive on, let alone be happy. one person’s unlimited wants are to so many others, cruel cold scarcity. i believe in what has been termed by native cultures “wetiko”. it means that unlimited greed is a disease of the mind. this is also is what i believe to be the underlying problem with Reaganomics, supply side, deregulation, in essence the prevailing thought driving the last 30 years of political trending in the USA, what ever fancy name or package the neocon/libs want to wrap it in.
    but i ramble…

  2. Dryocopus pileatus says:

    no need for me to rant. this guy pretty much nails it.

    “…We’re talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.

    But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life…

    That’s a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn’t have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

    And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly, we are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions, jobs and dignity.

    We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really has created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population throughout the world.”

    i found this link at Jesse’s Cafe Americain.

    http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26885-henry-giroux-on-the-rise-of-neoliberalism

    his introduction is also very worthwhile.

    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

    what most of you know, a friends son recently killed himself, after years of underemployment. i told some of you privately by e-mail about an event in my neighborhood two nights ago. it appears to have been a scream out for help. my wife had to call 911. when the fuck will people wake up? to the right wingers who have hijacked our democracy – if Jesus is coming back, everyone of you should spend the rest of eternity in hell. but that is not what i believe, just what i see as fair. but i ramble.

  3. xty says:

    I remember back in the nineties our prime minister( maybe Mulroney a capital C conservative, as in a complete and total sell out and one of the people that disillusioned me rather well, as compared to a philosophically conservative person, which was my bad for being young and not understanding money and mistaking words for deeds, because I am all for not throwing out babies with bathwater and thought that was what they meant, and also was completely blind to the implementation of an idea at the hands of a monster machine, because “free trade” would make sense if people weren’t such bastards the world over, and if small was allowed to function and big coercive organizations were not) said that women who were not working [as in at a paying job] were not fully participating in the economy. As in if I wasn’t being paid, he couldn’t tax me. I was pregnant or had kids [or both!] at the time and the old family-supporting party just threw me out of the lifeboat. Even as a married mum, I have been unable to pay into our old age pension plan, so I am screwed later. It is a great ironic social safety net – it is forced savings, in a sense, but they take your money, there is a cap on payout but not on pay-in, and there is no guarantee that any money will be there when you are 65. And if like me you were not a fully participating member of society – although I homeschooled my kids for years while happily paying education taxes and we have never been on the receiving end except for health care and that is a mandatory receiving end as we cannot pay for it by law – and my hubby has been able to employ many people as well as work in a way he never could have as well as have a family – participating in the fucking economy on my behalf so to speak, an economy crowded by women who have to work to support the monster consumer society people came to believe in – you get nada.

    I remember people, close to me, who seemed to expect what their parents had taken thirty years to achieve as soon as they married or left university. 4 bedrooms, two cars. What the fuck? Madness. And the houses around us in Toronto. Changing hands every few years, just a few of them, but total reno’s every time. Out came drywall, windows, cabinets. Kitchen to the front, laundry upstairs. Kitchen to the back, laundry downstairs. Nanny quarters – ’cause mum is always at work. Fine for women to work if they want to, don’t get me wrong, women are fabulous at all sorts of fields, like medicine, and it is not actually true that you are not participating in society if you are not getting paid. God I helped a lot of people’s children through school. So many field trips that myself and one other mum made possible, keeping that adult ratio up and the little monkeys from killing themselves. And Grades 7 & 8 … I was like a mum to 70 kids for about 5 years and we lived so close that lunch had rules at our house. And the money economy has had horrible costs that are just beginning to crop up – I do not think that the rise in ADHD, etc., is just because of increased stress. I will possibly offend gazillions of people who had no other choice, but preventing kids and mums from being together and the creep of government early education is part of the money game of which you rant. We are down to full day kindergarten for three-year olds I think, and Quebec has very cheap baby care. Cradle to grave state dependency is not just a socialist trap – it can also be a result of this switch to a purely financial economy. Look at old people too – warehoused. My mum included.

    I thought it was ideological and it was … but a hidden ideology of money money money. That is one thing politicians on both sides always agree on … they want to spend your money on projects that they promise will benefit you and yours in the future, and what we all need are jobs, jobs, jobs. That has been the election promise from all three parties here, almost especially from the socialists. Jobs yes … but not horrible ones that feed the machine. Metropolis looked like full employment!

    And Good Morning. Sorry for the insensitive jobs rant … but it is so maddening. People need a way to make a living … that is very different from a politician pretending he can deliver a job, as if it were a jar of pickles. And blaming those who aren’t working for not participating in an economy they cannot join is extra infuriating. So my rant ended wrong, but I hope you see my point. It is sort of like saying what you need is health insurance, when what you need is health care.

  4. Dryocopus pileatus says:

    that was an excellent rant. now we are getting somewhere.

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