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There's a very large body of work in fields like critical economic geography (as an extremely introductory and nonrepresentative example, [1][2]) that discuss t

There's a very large body of work in fields like critical economic geography (as an extremely introductory and nonrepresentative example, [1][2]) that discuss the affective, pluralistic dimensions to global and local economies, of which I think orthodox economics barely touches on (slightly, somewhat, in neuroeconomics). I think this is really important. With a better understanding of the limits of human rationality (which is chief among other things) we can begin to unravel the original axioms and assumptions of the neoliberal era, the ones that basically treat humans merely as selfish, individualistic, perfectly-rational economic agents. With a better understanding of this, we can begin to build a society for humans instead of capital. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f10a/6bae34ac59c7be9b7741feef9c1566757caf.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f10a/6bae34ac59c7be9b7741fe... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118384497.ch34 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111838449...

bachmeier 8y ago
> With a better understanding of the limits of human rationality (which is chief among other things) we can begin to unravel the original axioms and assumptions of the neoliberal era, the ones that basically treat humans merely as selfish, individualistic, perfectly-rational economic agents. Your comment is the equivalent of saying astronomers need to consider models in which the planets rotate around the sun. Just as one bit of evidence, we can ask if anyone has ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for studying the things you claim "economics barely touches on". If someone received a Nobel Prize, the field hasn't "barely touched on" it. 2017: Richard Thaler for behavioral economics. His entire career has been devoted to studying the limits of human rationality. 2013: Robert Shiller for his work showing financial markets are not efficient. 2002: Kahneman and Smith for using experiments to study the decision making process. 2001: George Akerlof, whose Nobel Lecture included "Behavioral Macroeconomics". 1978: Herbert Simon, the guy responsible for bounded rationality. These are just a few names off the top of my head that won a Nobel Prize for work that you say economists aren't doing.
- elvinyung 8y ago
  But I think that precisely misses the point. Yes, orthodox academic economics focuses very deeply on the psychology of decision making, but it doesn't focus very broadly on all the other things I mentioned. I love the work of Kahneman and Tversky (among others) as much as anyone else, but I would still further argue that there's so much more to do, that as far as I know, orthodox economics still mostly ignores other components of society within which economics is imbricated, such as the cultural (overviewed by the John Pickles paper I linked) and the affective (e.g. the unremunerated emotional and affective labor that the author mentions as integral to the functioning of the economy). Can you argue that this is scope creep? Sure, but you can also go the other way, and argue that any reductionism will always make the model inaccurate. Striking a balance is obviously important here, but I would argue that it is necessary at the very least to try widening the scope, at least a little bit.

bachmeier 8y ago

> With a better understanding of the limits of human rationality (which is chief among other things) we can begin to unravel the original axioms and assumptions of the neoliberal era, the ones that basically treat humans merely as selfish, individualistic, perfectly-rational economic agents. Your comment is the equivalent of saying astronomers need to consider models in which the planets rotate around the sun. Just as one bit of evidence, we can ask if anyone has ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for studying the things you claim "economics barely touches on". If someone received a Nobel Prize, the field hasn't "barely touched on" it. 2017: Richard Thaler for behavioral economics. His entire career has been devoted to studying the limits of human rationality. 2013: Robert Shiller for his work showing financial markets are not efficient. 2002: Kahneman and Smith for using experiments to study the decision making process. 2001: George Akerlof, whose Nobel Lecture included "Behavioral Macroeconomics". 1978: Herbert Simon, the guy responsible for bounded rationality. These are just a few names off the top of my head that won a Nobel Prize for work that you say economists aren't doing.

elvinyung 8y ago
But I think that precisely misses the point. Yes, orthodox academic economics focuses very deeply on the psychology of decision making, but it doesn't focus very broadly on all the other things I mentioned. I love the work of Kahneman and Tversky (among others) as much as anyone else, but I would still further argue that there's so much more to do, that as far as I know, orthodox economics still mostly ignores other components of society within which economics is imbricated, such as the cultural (overviewed by the John Pickles paper I linked) and the affective (e.g. the unremunerated emotional and affective labor that the author mentions as integral to the functioning of the economy). Can you argue that this is scope creep? Sure, but you can also go the other way, and argue that any reductionism will always make the model inaccurate. Striking a balance is obviously important here, but I would argue that it is necessary at the very least to try widening the scope, at least a little bit.