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Comments

• [1] David Harrington from Manhattan August 07, 2007 - 12:22PM

  Leonard, can I just deconstruct your guest Tyler Cowen for second, because I find it hard to listen to people expound economics as an explanation for everything. The truth is that much of human life is irrational and not based on self-interest, only these endeavors can't be well-understood in economic terms (a fact which economists can't really understand).

  Economists seem to share a trend of loving to explode peoples' preconceptions of how the world works by using their "science" to show us the truth. However, their field of expertise itself is based on serious prejudices about what is good (self-interest, free markets, 100% rationality) that predetermine their conclusions. Just as a Bible thumper will naturally find proof for his judgments about the world within scripture because that is his starting point, economist will naturally find that everything should be subject to market forces because that are their starting points and that is the lens that colors their views of the world. And the economist's view today, as it was during the days of the British Empire (when The Economist magazine was founded) is just a way to justify economists' own elitism and belief that everything should be answered the way that they answer it.

  
  
• [2] Gene Borio` from NYC August 07, 2007 - 12:22PM

  I liked what Noel Prize winner in chemistry Dr. Peter Agre said on the Colbert Report, when Colbert asked him the provocative, "Do they give you a Nobel prize for flinging your poop?"

  He was taken aback, thought for a second, then said, "No, that's the Economics prize."

  If you don't get Agre's joke, you need to examine how pro-business economic theories have, like kudzu, successfully invaded all aspects of our society, including public health, legislation and the law.

  Economic theory these days seems angled to rationalize that "the free market, she works," and that it's the individual who is responsibe for anything and everything that happens to him or her as a result. Their highly-paid minions ($1,000/hour and more) show up in courtrooms around the contry, testifying in matters utterly outside their expertise, but they apply their economics framework to the situation to prove that mighty corporations are liable for nothing, and that everything's all the individual's fault.

  Dr. Paul Slovic was given a Nobel Prize for what another Nobel-Prize-winning economist (Kahnneman) called the most revolutionary development in economic theory in years, Slovic's "affect heuristic"--the idea that maybe, just maybe, emotional issues play into people's decisions, rather than pure, rational, dispassionate profit-loss calculations.

  
  
• [3] Libby August 07, 2007 - 12:33PM

  As a long-time participant in online personal ads to meet someone, I can attest that most men aren't really interested in meeting a "real" (i.e., imperfect) person. I have been honest in revealing myself (age, occupation, interests, qualities) and am not ugly, but the online singles scene is based on hyperbole--read the New York Review of Books personal ads (most placed by women)--they sound too good to be true (and probably are). Online, people lie and make judgments based on the facts of you (age, occupation, etc.) that wouldn't be made if you met them in person.