Idiot: The Weak Heart of Economics By NANCY FOLBRE

In a post last week, my fellow blogger Edward Glaeser asserted that freedom is the “moral heart” of economics. His clear account helps explain how many economists think and feel. But he overstates the agreement among economists, and he overreaches with his emphatic focus on freedom with no regard for responsibility or care.

Economics never has been and never will be a unanimous discipline. Rich disputes over the definition of self-interest, the role of altruism and the definition of social welfare have characterized the discipline from its outset, and they can’t be resolved by selective quotes from Adam Smith.

In a recent book, “Greed, Lust and Gender,” I trace the history of assertions that the pursuit of individual self-interest will benefit everyone – alongside the concerns that it can lapse into the destructive forms that are culturally labeled greed or lust. The evolution of these arguments is strongly linked to the process of economic development itself, including the transformation of traditional gender roles.

The emphasis on freedom as our top priority reflects a vision of economic actors as adult, able-bodied individuals unencumbered by responsibility for others. Professor Glaeser happily quotes Adam Smith: “Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care.” True for men perhaps, but not for babies, boys or girls.

We humans experience periods of dependency at the beginning of our lives that largely determine our access to resources – including the development of our own human capital – as adults. We remain subject to unexpected illness, disability, unemployment, accident and assault as adults, and if we survive these, we eventually become dependent on others in old age.

Individual freedom doesn’t necessarily conflict with the care of those we love, because love itself shapes our preferences, our utility functions. We often freely choose to sacrifice for others.

But preferences alone don’t provide a secure basis for the care of dependents. That’s partly why societies develop concepts of social responsibility and legal obligation that often infringe on individual freedom.

We expect parents to take responsibility for their children whether they love them or not. We expect children to help elderly parents in need. We stipulate responsibilities of citizenship based on social kinship, and many taxes we pay go to care for children, the sick and disabled, and the elderly.

Women have fought for, and gained, important new freedoms in the course of economic development. But the responsibility for the care of others – traditionally borne primarily by women – has not gone away, even as it is being reconfigured, and, in some ways, redistributed.

Long before Karl Marx invented the term “class struggle,” socialist ideals grew out of family values of solidarity and care for others. Like families, societies sometimes fail to find the right balance between freedom and responsibility, and if they fail, they fall apart. Freedom is just one chamber of our moral heart.

Many economists who prioritize freedom feel that corporations in the United States have no responsibility to help create jobs for American workers, regardless of the rate of unemployment. They admire Milton Friedman, who emphasized more than 40 years ago that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.

At least some economists (and I count most of my friends among them) disagree.

President Obama invoked social responsibility in his State of the Union address, in which he begged the American business community to join in an effort to create jobs. As he put it: “We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people.”

That binding seems to chafe many of our fellow citizens. Many large corporations want to be free of us and have already moved out. They are angling for a no-fault divorce, with no child support or alimony. They don’t want to help pay for our education, our health or our retirement, and with offshore production and clever tax shelters, they won’t have to.

Their hearts are weak, and ours may soon be broken.

ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS

That's one ignorant economic cunt...

Oh man

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Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

Thanks for spoiling my lunch. What I suffer through to 'know thy enemy.'
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Idiot: The Weak Heart of Economics By NANCY FOLBRE PgkowJT

Idiot: The Weak Heart of Economics By NANCY FOLBRE PgkowJT

Quote :: Thanks for spoiling my lunch

Don't shoot the messenger...

The blame rests with the enemy...

Say, is there a sniper in the house?

Devil lol

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Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

The house next door...

DUCK!!
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Anarcho Capitalists Retail , OZschwitz Downunder BoutiqueAnarcho-Capitalists,AnCaps Forum,Anti-State,Anti-Statist,Inalienable Rights Defenders,Non-Aggression Principle,Non-Initiation of Force Principle,Rothbardians,Anarchist,Capitalist,objectivism,Ayn Rand,Anarcho-Capitalism,Anarcho-Capitalist,politics,libertarianism,Ancap Forum,Anarchist Forum,Vulgar Libertarians,Hippies of The Right,Forum for Anarcho-Capitalist,Forum for Anarcho-Capitalists,Forum for AnCap,Forum for AnCaps,Libertarian,Anarcho-Objectivist,Freedom, Laissez Faire, Free Trade, Black Market, Randroid, Randroids, Rothbardian, AynArchist, Anarcho-Capitalist Forum, Anarchism, Anarchy, Free Market Anarchism, Free Market Anarchy, Market Anarchy
Idiot: The Weak Heart of Economics By NANCY FOLBRE PgkowJT