From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 02 1999 - 10:56:27 MST
Robert Fogel, economic historian and Nobel Prize winner, gave his AEA
presidential address on 4Jan99, and said:
Technophysio evolution requires not just marginal adjustments, but major
leaps in economic theory. We are slow in pondering such grand questions
as the implications of the Human Genome Project, which is now nearing
completion, and the emergence of molecular medicine for the future of
economic life. We have entered an era in which purposeful intervention
in evolutionary processes is passing beyond plant and animal breeding.
The new growth economics needs to incorporate at least some aspects of
directed, rapid human evolution. Endogenous technological change needs
to extend to the fundamentals of human behavior. Theorists also need to
grapple with the ethical implications of technological changes that,
whatever their positive aspects, threaten to undermine the mystery of
human life by transforming people into "material" that is transplanted,
cloned, arbitrarily changed in personality and intelligence, and
otherwise manufactured in ways that challenge the definition of a human
being. ["Catching Up with the Economy", Am. Ec. Rev., 89(1):1-21, 3/99]
That is, Fogel chided economists for not paying more attention to the
sort of issues we discuss here. His normative take on these topics may
be different from ours, but I welcome the positive study he calls for.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
after 8/99: Assist. Prof. Economics, George Mason Univ.
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