Real damage to our thinking happens when we allow errors to go unnoticed.\u00a0 It\u2019s not dissimilar from a technical flaw that a musician or sportsperson might develop.\u00a0 For a while, the flaw is easily absorbed and they can function at a high level.\u00a0 But after a while a ceiling is reached and it becomes obvious that in order to make progress it is necessary to make alterations at a fundamental level.\u00a0 The bad habits are so ingrained that it is very difficult to make the adjustment required, as it can leave the agent feeling no longer capable of performing the simplest skills of their profession.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Notions of \u201cutility\u201d in economics, the supply\/demand \u201ccurve\u201d, are so ingrained in most economics students\u2019 thinking that it\u2019s hard to think what the study amounts to if these concepts cannot be counted on[1]<\/a>.\u00a0 But in relation to the eight errors highlighted in the paper below, I want to hold a spotlight to a common psychological problem.\u00a0 That problem is allowing certain terms to act as proxies for more fundamental concepts using the tacit assumption that the proxy implies the latter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n That famous old (reportedly) Cree Indian saying: \u201cOnly when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money\u201d hints at what I am getting at here.\u00a0 When the term \u201cmoney\u201d is allowed to go proxy for \u201cwealth\u201d (and \u201cwealth\u201d itself is denied its semantic independence from \u201cmoney\u201d) we set ourselves up for this kind of fall.\u00a0 Because, if we worship gold rather than what gold buys we will be utterly dumbfounded when the day comes that gold buys nothing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n So, if we conduct our economic, political and social discourse using these proxies we will, sure as eggs is eggs, come to the wrong conclusions.\u00a0 If we pursue economic growth because that brings money and that means wealth and us all feeling good well then\u2026er, no, it won\u2019t work.\u00a0 Because the proxies we are using do not have the connotations guaranteed, and without these connotations the whole connecting logic breaks down.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n And that, in a nutshell, is why we need to stop everything and start again.\u00a0 To build an economic system from first principles that is rooted in ecology and psychology.\u00a0 To only use proxies in discourse where this rooting is transparent and uncontroversial.<\/p>\r\n Orthodox economic thinking: a cultural delusion<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n [1]<\/a> I\u2019m not going to critique these in depth here, as there are countless voices who can do that better than me.\u00a0 If you are unfamiliar with the arguments, a good place to start is Kate Raworth\u2019s \u201cDoughnut Economics\u201d About Doughnut Economics<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Real damage to our thinking happens when we allow errors to go unnoticed.\u00a0 It\u2019s not dissimilar from a technical flaw that a musician or sportsperson might develop.\u00a0 For a while, the flaw is easily absorbed and they can function at a high level.\u00a0 But after a while a ceiling is reached and it becomes obvious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-economic-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abtax.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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