[p2p-research] Post-Autistic Economics

[Ryan Lanham]

Andy,

Yes, the point about the name is a long-standing controversy, and I agree it
is offensive.  It was recognized as such after the success made it nearly
impossible to change, if I remember the story correctly.

I concur that GDP is a horrible measure.  But it does correlate generally
with good things.  Further, it is measured badly. Development in Africa is a
long-standing pain for me.  Corruption, I'm convinced, is the greatest of
all evils.  Corruption comes in many forms and deserves who university
departments devoted to it...though of course the academy largely ignores the
topic.

The rest of what you write I basically agree with, too.

Ryan Lanham



On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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