Economics of Good and Evil
The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 16 June 2011
- ISBN 9780199767205
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages376 pages
- Size 164x242x24 mm
- Weight 653 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 15 b/w 0
Categories
Short description:
A historical tour of economic ideas in world literature to examine the way societies have reconciled their moral values with economic forces.
MoreLong description:
Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil.
In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good?
Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.
Beautifully written...A compulsive read
Table of Contents:
The Epic of Gilgamesh: On effectiveness, Immortality and the Economics of Friendship
The Old Testament: Earthliness and Goodness
Ancient Greece
Christianity: Spirituality in the Material World
Descartes the Mechanic
Bernard Mandeville's Beehive of Vice
Adam Smith, Blacksmith of Economics
Need for Greed - The History of Want
Progress and Sabbath Economics
The Axis of Good and Evil and the Bibles of Economics
The History of the Invisible Hand of the Market and Homo Oeconomicus
The History of Animal Spirits - the Dream Never Sleeps
MetaMathematics
Masters of Truth: Science, Myths and Faith
