[p2p-research] Post-Autistic Economics

[Andy Robinson]

The title is patently offensive, as it rests on a negative and prejudiced
stereotype of autism as unawareness of the world, when in fact it involves
differential awareness.  Calling a school or a journal "post-autistic
economics" is a bit like calling it "post-Jewish economics" on the
assumption that Jews are greedy - which would understandably cause an
outcry.  It is unforunate that this kind of prejudice is still entertained
in relation to psychological difference.

This said - the basic idea that mainstream economics is tunnel-visioned and
misses out more than it theorises is sound.  I've reached the conclusion
that nobody really knows the economics of different countries for instance,
because an awful lot is included which shouldn't be in most of the measures,
and a lot is excluded and unmeasurable.  For instance, Africa barely exists
in GDP/GNP terms.  If you look at the national GDP statistics, or the
international trade statistics, it would seem Africa has next to no
economy.  There are countries with per capita GDP of a few hundred dollars a
year (rising to a few thousand with PPP).  But then consider that
subsistence farming, and subsistence economics in general, is not included
in the figures.  And that informal and illicit economies are also not
included.  And that states and international agencies can't get reliable
data because everyone lies to avoid government regulation.  Suddenly it
turns out that we don't know anything about the size of the economy.  Then
at the other end is America - half again as rich as everyone else, yet the
poor seem to be poorer there than anywhere else - even (and this is the
weird bit) people who are nominally on the same amount of income.  Perhaps
because big portions of GDP are going on things that don't benefit people,
such as military spending.  They can supposedly control for cost of living,
though I wonder how complete it is.

The core of economics is the fallacy that the goal of life is to maximise
some number or other (this is true even of the reformers like Sen); the
correlate of this view is that things which can be counted (or at least, one
category of things which can be counted) matter more than things which
can't.  Once it's accepted that things which matter are often not countable,
that the numbers which express things which matter are only imperfect
representations which are necessarily flawed, and that any such
representation carries an irreducible risk that something essential has been
left out, and "economics" is cut back down to scale.

Personally, I think economics (counting) should be replaced by ecology
(relations).

bw
Andy
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