One of my English born girl friends used to use the word bollocks --which is a completely apt word in this case.

This reference describes the inevitable outcome of the current system.
Summed up by Maggialong these lines----there is no such thing as society, only me and my immediate self interest and gratification

1. http://www.coteda.com/fundamentals/index.html

Plus some further quotes from the same source.

DE-regulation, or the abandonment of rightly regulated and principled life, is the fundamental individual and collective fault of humankind. In their adventure of the pursuit of egoic "self"-fulfillment through egoic "self"-indulgence, or un-regulated and boundless consumerism, human beings have personally and collectively destined themselves to chaos and death, That global idealization of the idea of universal de-regulation has now achieved its almost terminal end-time.

....

The cultural (and political, economic, and social) basis of the current world-crisis is that EVERYBODY in the world is now trying to live like Westerners did when Westerners were able to exploit all other nation-states and all of the Earth-worlds natural resources for the sake of an un-regulated and boundlessly "self"-indulgent Western society. Everybody in the world is now competing, in a dreadful situation of confrontation, for what has now become a very limited reserve of human and natural resources---like dogs competing for the same chunk of meat.

Economics as a "Science".. I think not...

Economics, when there are so many conflicting theories and "expert opinions" floating around will always remain an "Art" and the product of subjective opinion rather than tangible law.

One quick description of an economist

"A person who knows how to perform every position described in the Karma Sutra perfectly but lacks a partner to perform them with".

Ho Hum “there is no such thing as society, only me and my immediate self interest and gratification”

And to correct Ho Hums misrepresentation of what Margaret Thatcher said…

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Now that sets the record straight .. instead leaving the words of one of the (recently past) greatest leaders of the free-world to be misrepresented by someone who is obviously, not worthy to walk in her shadow

Col, finally Thatcher's full quote.

Now that is eminently reasonable the way it's put, although one could argue that helping one's neighbour as she puts it is not that different from society, via the agency of government, protecting the homeless from cold winters, for example.

Twisting Thatcher's pattern of thinking around a bit, it could be said in response to "There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation", that the poor and powerless should only be forced to suffer so much before the state (or something else) should take the heavy burden from their shoulders.

The writer attempts to reconcile nature with the economic, political, and social system - which is ridiculous. Nor does he explain that the economists of all stripes are in the forefront and have played a leading role as advisors in the economic breakdown. The proportions of the economic crash of 2008 are vast and systemic. It is not some failure of this or that oversight, theory or policy. Nor the product of dishonest and greedy individuals. It is a crisis, a breakdown, of the economic and social order. An entire mode of global capital accumulation based on financial operations, fueled by mountainous increases in debt and worthless 'toxic paper' based on nothing more than 'liar loans' and crude speculation.
Some aspects of this crisis is that money travels around the globe at the speed of computers in search of a profit. No one knows where it comes from, who it belongs to and where it is going. In and of itself, that creates havoc on any national budgetary and financial planning. As well, you have a world monetary system and the nation state system with each against all and beggar thy neighbour. The giant banks and financial companies "big money" are exploiting the economic disaster for which they are chiefly responsible to further enrich themselves. The very people who created the economic crisis get rewarded colossally by the governments!

Economics is not just an artform.

There is a considerable amount of work in place to predict the results of different actions.

However, as there is so many inputs into a particular result, one requires more than just theory to analyse and predict.

With any science, there is always the basic "garbage in garbage out" scenario.

With the present GFC, in the US sub prime market, much garbage was dressed up and sold as assets.

The failure is not of the market or economics, but of a greedy banking sector flauting the rules of good economic sense.

As an article that illuminates some aspect of our lives with cogent and carefully constructed images, this piece ranks only slightly higher than a 3-year-old's crayon picture of mummy.

"One of the underlying causes of the current global financial crisis is the notion that the results of standard economic theory can be considered to be scientific."

Sez who?

Normally, when making a pronouncement as sweeping and unequivocal as this, it is polite to refer to some evidence.

The author chooses to provide none.

Even "my granny once said to me..." would be a step in the right direction, since it might lead to some illumination on exactly how gran reached this conclusion. But we get... nothing.

As a result, it is impossible to engage with the argument at any level, simply because is is arguing in an empty space.

For what it is worth, I don't believe that the existence of "standard economic theory", whether perceived, structured or implemented as either a science or as an art-form, has more than a tangential influence on the financial pickle we are now experiencing.

The "Efficient Market Hypothesis" does not stand or fall on the antics of the secondary banking system, or the gyrations of derivatives, or the vulnerability of hedge fund activities to abnormal events.

The secondary banking systems, and the business they wrote, were human implementations of profit maximization regardless of risk. In fact, if anything, it underlines the importance of the "fully informed market" that underpins EMH.

Derivatives were not created from any economic theory, but from the irrational exuberance of Banks for ever more sophisticated product with which to offset transactional risk, while hedge funds operated a form of bulk arbitrage based on mathematical models created by 27 year-old PhDs.

While you could possibly argue that these last did in fact have market theory at the back of their minds when formulating their financial whizzery, it is easy to see (in hindsight) that they came unstuck by ignoring it, rather than adhering to it.

Now, where are those crayons?

I'm off to find me a three-year-old.

I agree Pericles.

Some smart young apprentice masters of the universe go to university, and after being prodded by their parents or peers to do "the best they can in life", decide that it's easiest and safest to make lots of money by purely plying their brain. All they ask themselves is what do I want and how do I get it. They never question what is the right thing for them to do bearing in mind that they are also part of a society.

Therein lies the problem - the selfishness takes over and all non-financial considerations are relegated down their list of priorities. This leads to all types of hair-brained schemes minus any sense of propriety.

Hi Maiko,
It is refreshing to see a contributor to these columns who is willing to go beyond the regurgitation of hackneyed philosophy to suggest the possibility that there might be a better way.

Are you advocating a new social reform? Perhaps a merging of the regimen of the ant's existence with the entropy of human industry when you say: "A truly natural economic system would be a system that does not depend upon the state for its stability"? Do you have an model in mind?

As one person who has agonised over this question for the past 20 years or so I, for one, would be interested in hearing thoughts on how such a reform might work. Are you passionate enough about the topic to enter into a dialectic?

A good and interesting article; and pay no heed to the sniveling of rude and ignorant morons.

Your discussion of science, the necessary attributes of a science of economics, and your criticism of the defects of mainstream economic theory, are all sound.

The body of theory you are talking about already exists.

The Austrian school provides an integrated body of social theory, including economics, that satisfies all the conditions for science you set out. It also criticizes the mainstream neo-liberal schools precisely on the ground that you say is fundamental. Essential to economics is the study of market transactions in money prices. But the crucial factor in every single price is what you are calling the “mentalist” element, namely, the subjective value of the individual in deciding whether to buy or sell, or abstain from buying or selling.

The Austrian school is ‘positivist’, in the sense in which you use the word: it seeks to discover universal propositions of human action, independent of historical categories. It is not positivist in the sense that the so-called neo-liberal schools use the word: seeking to specify and test formal models, or measure by objective means the empirical results of those models.

The Austrians reject these methods for the same reason you do. Since the critical deciding factor in human action is subjective, and since these values are not measured and can never be objectified by money prices, therefore the mainstream positivist *method* – mathematical equations and models and empirical measurement – is invalid. That is why they have failed to come up with one single universal proposition, and why, as recently as early 2008, the disciples of these schools were saying the economy is fine.

However there are such things as universally valid and sound propositions of human action. For example:
1. “man acts”
2. “human action always entails preferring A to B”
3. “man’s action is intended to substitute an outcome in the future more favoured, for an outcome less favoured, from the point of view of the actor”

From such axioms, or from what can logically be deduced from them, the Austrian school has built up an integrated comprehensive body of social theory that answers all your desiderata. It accounts for the phenomena of social action and exchange without and with money, social co-operation under a division of labour, money, prices, capital, interest, credit and the trade cycle, wages, taxation and intervention, and the non-economic values that we all strive for too.

Using the different but still scientific method of axioms and what is logically consistent with them, the empirical side takes care of itself, just as with the science of geometry.

The Austrians are the only school of economics to have successfully predicted the GFC years in advance: http://mises.org/story/3128 . It is also the only one to have predicted the Great Depression years in advance. The Austrian theory of the trade cycle shows how the cycle of booms and depressions originates in inflation of the money supply, not as per Keynesian or neo-liberal orthodoxy.

Mises’ 1921 work Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth also showed how socialism cannot work in theory, let alone in practice because, lacking a market in capital goods, there could be no economic calculation in terms of prices, and it could thus only produce the planned chaos that it does in fact produce.

All the interesting questions on epistemology, cognitive psychology, and economics that you raise are answered comprehensively by Mises in his magnum opus Human Action, 1948.

His student Murray Rothbard also explores the question of a stateless society in Man, Economy and State with Power and Market.

“A free market society might be unstable precisely because such a society is one that humans are unable to form through free choice.”

Since force and fraud are illegal in market transactions, why could humans be unable to form such a society through free choice?

It is more likely that a free market society would be unstable because it is so difficult to stop armed gangs from becoming governments.

The home of the Austrian school is at mises.org ; see also lewrockwell.com

Sardine,

Since when do these lofty principles or whatever they are ever get put into practice exactly? Truly wonderful stuff I'm sure, although so is nirvana I understand.

OTOH the sorts of things I am talking about have been happening in spades in the REAL WORLD for decades. You'd see that if you didn't have your head permanently stuck in a book or in a bucket of sand. Deign to descend out of your lofty eyrie and see what's actually happening on the ground, then comment, why don't you.

What a pompous piece of puffery, Jardine K Jardine.

>>The Austrians are the only school of economics to have successfully predicted the GFC years in advance<<

That's as maybe.

But The Economist magazine - maybe you have heard of it - was also quite consistently prescient. The raspberry they gave Alan Greenspan on his retirement was quite specific.

"Investors' exaggerated faith in [Greenspan's] ability to protect them has undoubtedly encouraged them to take ever bigger risks and pushed share and house prices higher. In turn, American consumer spending has become dangerously dependent on unsustainable increases in asset prices and debt."

And:

"When the party ends, Mr Greenspan will not be there to clean up the mess. But end it surely will."

Possibly because The Economist doesn't belong to a "school", this had escaped your notice.

JKJ,

I often find that big words are used to cover the lack of understanding.

The Austrian school of economics is part of the general body of scholars contributing to the development of economic theory.

"But the intellectual battleground today is much more defined by methodological issues than ideological ones. Indeed, many of the policy wisdoms which flow from an Austrian analysis of the market economy are part of the common knowledge of market oriented economists."

And if you happen to read some of their stuff you would realise that they advocate a free market laize faire approach, not socialist.

Facts not verbosity will help you win an argument.

The Economist magazine is Keynesian. Keynesians think what causes depressions is a mysterious fall in ‘aggregate demand’ ie spending. The Economist and the Keynesians think the Fed – a private body constituted by private bankers acting under a legal monopoly granted by Congress - should have a licence to print as much money as it feels like, whenever it wants, without audit, without transparency, without the public being able to know. They think the cure for depressions is for government power to print more mountains of paper money, encourage more mountains of debt based on nothing, inflate more bubbles, destroy productive businesses to fund loss-making projects and businesses, and institutionalise the ripping-of off millions more people using a legal monopoly of fraud and counterfeiting.

Since the Fed came into existence, it has inflated away the value of the dollar, reducing it by 95 percent!

Yet these clowns think we need the Fed to keep inflation low! A horse-laugh to that.

It is inflationary monetary policy that is causing the cycle of booms and busts in the first place. Then when it produces the depression the Austrians predicted, the Keynesians say the solution is more of the same, which is what’s happening now. What’s next? Negative interest rates? Are they going to start paying us to borrow money to spend on loss-making businesses?

In other words, the Keynesians are clueless; they are in actively making the problem worse.

Proof of their culpable idiocy is in this interesting interview, in which the (Keynesian) Economist magazine, interviews the (Austrian school) Ron Paul: http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=78d8c6ec44f78962754fcbbe3124cfccea02eb95&rf=bm

The paper money system is a total fraud. It shafts the poor and workers most, and also funds America's imperial wars. Ending the Fed is something on which both socialists, middle-way types, and libertarians should all be on common ground.

Businesswoman-turned-freedom fighter gives her report on the fashion show contest between “Laissez-faire” Mises and “Après Moi le Déluge” Keynes: http://mises.org/story/3571

If The Economist is Keynsian, Wing Ah Ling, how come it gave Greenspan the Bronx cheer?

The fact that they don't consider the gold standard, as promoted by Ron Paul, to be feasible in the twentyfirst century doesn't make them particularly out-of-step.

Especially as Ron himself (thanks for the link) hasn't a clue how it might work.

There isn't sufficient gold in the world, by the way, above ground or yet-to-be-mined, to support even a fraction of world trade.

I loved the part in the video where he was asked how people would buy stuff in his brave new world of gold certificates - I'm only surprised the interviewer didn't burst out laughing. Maybe it was edited out afterwards.

The reality is that none of the "paper money is evil" merchants have the faintest idea how an alternative system could operate without creating the biggest disaster this planet has seen.

Or perhaps that is what you are angling for?

The end-times, courtesy of a mad rush to dig up metal.

What puzzles me most is how you folks can possibly imagine that using some random metal that you dig out of the ground actually represents a commonsense approach to the financing of industry and trade.

Seriously.

It reminds me of that old Bob Newhart tobacco sketch.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/1003044449-4450.html (scroll down)

""You got another winner for us, Sir Walt, have ya? Sil-ver. What's sil-ver, Walt? A shiny rock. You've got 80 tons of it. (LAUGHTER) You bought 80 tons of shiny rock, Walt? Ha, ha, oh you're beautiful, Walt. (LAUGHTER) Look, Walt, I don't know if you noticed last time, we have plenty of shiny rocks over here in England...."

Unless you want to pretend that these shiny rocks have some magical powers, you must admit that as currency, they have some major limitations.

But the biggest flaw in your position is that you treat the population as moronic idiots, slaves to machine and pawns of the devil.

Whatever happened to taking responsibility for getting into debt of your own free will.

Or not getting into debt, if that's your choice.

Pericles
So collectivist economic planning works does it?

And the GFC has nothing to do with monetary policy I suppose?

Do you honestly think that the ‘financing of industry and trade’ requires a centralized government monopoly to constantly inflate the supply of paper money, which just happens to be used to finance imperial wars and the welfare state do you?

The billions of people should not be free to choose what to use as money because the wisdom of Pericles knows what better for all of them, than they do?

Without that, industry and trade would collapse because people would not be able to figure out how to make payment? Their wishes need to be forcibly overridden by a secretive cabal deciding how much fake money to print and give it to whomever they want without accounting to anyone?

Both the Keynesians and the monetarists are clueless. Both of them failed to understand or predict the GFC. Greenspan was the author of the policies that gave rise to the housing boom and bust. And Bernanke, as recently as April 2008, was saying the economy is fine.

The fact is, “most economists” are interventionists statist who believe in collectivist economic planning of the money supply. But government is no more capable of planning the money supply than it is of the wheat supply, or the sausage supply.

The forest of socialism has been cut off at the base, but remains standing because of the entanglement of its branches at the farthest ends, held together by the vested interests of the powerful, and the credulity of the conceited and ignorant.

RobP “nobles oblige” and “philanthropy” predate “socialism” thus, socialism can take credit for nothing, other than the oppression it demands to function.

You say “Twisting Thatcher's pattern of thinking around a bit,”

That is what Ho Hum did, it produces a fraudulent and fallacious argument.

Anyone who postulates a argument point based on “twisting” what someone else said really destroys the basis of their criticism before they start.

Shadow Minister “Economics is not just an artform. There is a considerable amount of work in place to predict the results of different actions.”

Disagree SM… regardless the amount of work which might be used in “prediction”;
“prediction” is not “economics” and “economics” is not solely about prediction.

But to the matter of economic prediction, the world contains 6 billion or so independent variables and the number of interactions which will influence those 6 billion variables is infinite. To predict anything based on infinite variables is an insoluble problem… hence most economists are in a state of permanent disagreement not only with their peers but also themselves.

Having supposedly benefitted from “Keynesian” economics in UK in the 1950-1980, I would observe, Keynes was a moron and his economic theories a useful as Wilson’s “plumbers nightmare”, used to illustrate money supply.

The last people you want to give economic authority to are the shonky politicians, who sell their soul for re-election or the even shonkier civil service “expert” (of every flavor) bureaucrats, who sit like silent puppeteers thinking they control the rest of us

Col,

The way I see "socialism" and "individualism" depends on the context. They both have a part to play, while too much of either is no good. I was watching Australian Story this week and last, which was an expose of the work of Peter Andrews in renewing the landscape on his rural property after years of one-sided farming practices which had led to land erosion amongst other damaging effects. I'll use this as an analogy.

What he found was that after decades of previous land clearing, whenever there was a deluge of rain in the area, the water ran off the land so fast it washed the soil away with it leading to vast erosion gullies. What he was a genius at was intuitively working out how to balance the landscape so that the water was retained on the land for as long as possible but without totally damming it. So what he did was to artificially build blockages (rocks, dead trees etc) in the creeks at critical points (much like beavers do) to break the natural speed of the river and let it move through at a trickle. What resulted was that his property was a green oasis amongst the parched surrounding properties.

The balance between socialism and individualism I see in the same way. Socialism is the equivalent of damming up the flow so that the waters of individualism don't run through so fast they destroy the fabric and habitats of people in society. But the smart "socialist" will not totally dam up the flow because that both deprives the water to others downstream as well as turns his oasis into a smelly, stagnant cesspool. The important point here is to strike the right balance given the existing circumstances.

RobP
That assumes that there is an inherent conflict between the interests of individuals and those of society. I can see how this is justified to stop people killing, assaulting, robbing, etc: aggressing against others’ person and property. But force and fraud are illegal under capitalism. So what would be an example of the conflict of interests as between individual and society, apart from aggression or fraud?

“Society” is not a thing in itself. It is an aspect of human action: people co-operating with each other. Society doesn’t get up in the morning and decide what to have for breakfast. Society no more thinks than it eats or drinks. Society is not a decision-making entity.

Society is not the state, and the state is not society. If the explanation of government is that it “represents” society, then what was it doing all those centuries before people had the vote? And what about in those countries where people do not have the vote? And what about in Australia, where voting is compulsory? You can’t build any theory of consent on that.

The state, whether democratic or not, is that minority of society who claim a legal monopoly of actions that the state declares to be crimes for everyone else. It is a legal monopoly of force and fraud.

It is a false dichotomy to contrast ‘individualism’ and ‘socialism’ for two reasons. Firstly individual action, excluding force and fraud, is not inconsistent with social values. On the contrary, all social goods, and all social groups, are the result of individual human action. And secondly, social co-operation can be based on consent and voluntary exchange; or on legalised force and fraud. The question is which it should be.

No-one has a problem with voluntary socialism: people voluntarily forming themselves into groups to promote some social end, such as charities, soccer clubs and volunteer fire brigades do.

But have you justified the use of violence or threats as the basis of social co-operation? If not, you have not justified any governmental action.

With the land example, remember that governments made it a condition of landholding for many decades in the last century that landholders *must* clear the land, and this was the origin of much land degradation.

Thus even if the dichotomy between individualism and socialism were granted, it still would not justify the assumption that government has superior knowledge, capacity or goodness. Socialism still would not provide any advance on the original problem, because governments are constituted by the same imperfect human beings as constitute the original problem.

But quite apart from that, no-one has a right to speak for values above human values. Anyone pretending to, is merely speaking for his own values as against those of others. If we took away all the humans, there would be no value in the earth to speak of.

To say that the land was degraded is to say that its capacity to provide for future human values was degraded. But if it doesn’t mean that, then what does it mean?

So this means the earlier owners were mistaken in their use of the land, so far as they intended to preserve its productive capacity. They used it to produce too much for the then present, and not enough for the now future.

But this does not solve the problem. Because if the cost of preserving the land is to go bankrupt, as I understand Peter Andrews did, then how is that an option for other land-users generally?

The ideal is both to use the land to serve today’s human interests in food, etc. and to preserve its capacity for future human values including ecological. But this is to say no more than that the ideal is to preserve and enhance its capital value. Otherwise how are we to know what are the relevant values to be preserved?

None of these problems provides any reason in favour of using the legal apparatus of coercion and compulsion to make decisions, except to ban force and fraud. We should let individual freedom, not a legal monopoly of crime, decide what form social c-operation should take.

>>The billions of people should not be free to choose what to use as money because the wisdom of Pericles knows what better for all of them, than they do?<<

¿Qué?

That's quite an achievement, Jardine K Jardine. A sentence that, despite consisting entirely of simple words, is totally meaningless.

Congratulations.

Plus, of course...

>>So collectivist economic planning works does it?...Do you honestly think that the ‘financing of industry and trade’ requires a centralized government monopoly to constantly inflate the supply of paper money<<

No. Nor have I ever suggest that it might.

Are you sure you aren't imagining things?

>>Without that, industry and trade would collapse because people would not be able to figure out how to make payment? Their wishes need to be forcibly overridden by a secretive cabal deciding how much fake money to print and give it to whomever they want without accounting to anyone?<<

That's bordering on the paranoid delusional.

I'd stay indoors if I were you. They might be out there, just waiting... waiting...

Peter,

"“Society” is not a thing in itself. It is an aspect of human action: people co-operating with each other. Society doesn’t get up in the morning and decide what to have for breakfast. Society no more thinks than it eats or drinks. Society is not a decision-making entity."

True. But what society at any time is, is the social equlibrium that is built up by the previous actions of many individuals. The point is that, if you move through too fast with any sort of radical venture, capitalist or otherwise, you will start wrenching the fabric of society that has been built up. For some people - I doubt if you're one of them - that can lead to a number of mostly invisible or subtle conditions like dislocation, pain and marginalisation. So, in response to your comment: "That assumes that there is an inherent conflict between the interests of individuals and those of society", of course it is true that one man's meat can be another's poison. Would people fight politically if they didn't think their interests were at stake? Isn't there something in it for you to oppose what I've written, for instance?

I should say I'm not against individualism per se, but against any rampant form of it that overrides the rights of other, less powerful individuals by tipping the playing field too far in one direction. I think we might agree there.

NB: Athough I put it in quotes, I probably shouldn't have used the word socialist as it is such a loaded term and close to being out of date. Substitute that for the word collectivist instead in my earlier post and see if that makes more sense.

RobP “The balance between socialism and individualism I see in the same way. Socialism is the equivalent of damming up the flow so that the waters of individualism don't run through so fast they destroy the fabric and habitats of people in society.”

I THINK YOU MIGHT BE DESCRIBING SUSTAINABLE INDIVIDUALISM MORE THAN SOCIALISM Rob…

I think you might be describing “sustainable Individualism” (versus avarice/greed) more than “socialism” Rob…
And nothing generates a greater sense of sustainability and interest in the future than when that interest is manifest in one’s children…
Hence, we can see additional understanding and make more appropriate reference to Maggie’s words, the ones which Ho Hum, (like those who rely upon socialist beliefs), conveniently corrupted

“….And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbour.”…

"I THINK YOU MIGHT BE DESCRIBING SUSTAINABLE INDIVIDUALISM MORE THAN SOCIALISM Rob…"

I think you're right.

However, don't bite my head off when I say that socialism had and still has to a lesser extent a legitimate place in acting as a bulwark and balancing agent against the exact opposite in the exploitative mercantile class.

As long as the socialists do not stifle those individuals who are really trying to live sustainably and make a positive difference, I don't have a problem. (The truth be known, even if socialists do their worst and run amok for a while, the rest of society will eventually see them as the emperor who has no clothes and stiffen their resolve against them. The socialists will then perish.)

RobP.. no bite intended LOL

I apologise for the uppercase.. I rewrote it (directly below) and forgot to erase the original

The point is we can have regulation without the collective monopolistic ownership which inevitably attends socialism as a fact.

For instance, corporate law regulates company reporting, share ownership and even the treatment of minority share holders with a high degree of success around the world and does not rely, one iota, on government ownership of anything.

To stifling individuals.. how is "Equality" ever achieved if not by stiffling the talented because, as sure as anything, you will never pull up the performance of the dullards to match even that of the able let alone the extremely or particularly gifted.

Col,

Certainly one of the bad aspects of socialism is that it stifles talent and initiative of the more talented, of that there is no doubt. While you were out of circulation for a while, Pericles, examinator and I triangulated to the conclusion that the right term was “equity” rather than “equality”. Of course, just like one can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you can’t make people equal as they fundamentally aren’t to start with. Everyone is at a different stage of development and any attempt to give equality to those that either don’t need it or haven’t earned it is actually hindering their personal development (as well as stuffing up others). The idea of equity is to recognise people are at different levels and that they need a certain environment to develop themselves and then allowing them that proper space.

Goodness me, what a journey reading all that. I was on the verge of disagreeing, then found the author also disagreed.

Brilliant ideas, however bio-economics is a huge conceptual step that requires many assumptions; and logical or rational as they may appear, each needs to be verified or verifiable for the whole thing to hold water.

Given the misleading nature of the purely cognitive, my preference is for behavioural economics which already exists although it provides only part of the picture of global economics.

The flaw in Marko's argument is that researchers in any discipline have moved beyond grand theories. All one can hope for is to make sense of the world now and of what the future might hold by study and observation and testing from frames of reference of a range of disciplines and cross-disciplines - like the blind man and the elephant.

In these endeavours we are mostly off the mark, however we learn a lot about the subject in the process. One key thing to be learnt from the GFC is that neither neo-liberal ideology nor post-Keynesianism will give us all the answers we would like in order to stay safe and keep the wolf from the door.

Religion and philosophy are needed, to help people make sense of what at times appears to be an irrational world; or a world beyond our understanding.

At the end of the day people are driven by irrational beliefs; which at least give us a sense of purpose and keep us keeping things happening in the world.

As well as a rational science of economics we also need a value and belief system to guide and make sense of what we learn and experience. I don't see an alternative to this.

Philosophy and science are not mutually exclusive. Were someone to feel they understood just one aspect of a research endeavour, some unforeseen factor would arise or change and it would be back to the drawing board. Or we'd be approaching old knowledge with changed values and beliefs.