The substance of economics taught today has become so 'ivory tower' removed from its evolutionary human basis that off-stage, behind-the-scenes academe is often occupied with what can only be identified as hermeneutics in 'institutional, heterodox, behavioral, feminine' and other such 'denominational sub-speciation'. |
Economics is defined as 'the science that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of commodities' (American Heritage Dictionary). It should strike anyone 'of reasonable intelligence' then, as something of a peculiar
if not in vacuo definition in that -all three mechanisms a matter of 'what the system can bear', there is no reference to 'the nature and constitution of human-being' to which end 'economics' operates. Missing, in effect, is an assimilation of the
biology and anthropology underlying all economics -yesterday, today and tomorrow.
First of all, economics is not a science; were it as described above, it would be only bookkeeping and accounting at best (or worst); it is a science only in the sense (and that, far from broad) that certain statistical and other analytical devices have been conscripted in something of prediction (production, distribution, consumption) useful in the governance of peoples. But it is only in governance, under 'the nature and constitution of human-being', that economics has any validity at all in view of the fact that what economics invests, at large or in fine, is sustenance and viability -life-style-and-quality, what has so far been, at least historically, something of only a classical aristocratic construct. |
It is useful then, to consider the evolution of economics as essentially one out of primitive man's pecking-ordered barter into his inevitable aristocratization(*1). Perhaps the single, most severe, argument that can be leveled at economists then, is that as 'overseers of the human condition' (many disclaim), their operative position is one of essential disconsideration of such aristocratization, of 'idlemind-occupation eventually determined -heuristically, under what the system can bear' -of what is inevitably, a miscegenating mankind of increasingly anoumenal, relatively monocultural ethos.
[All government and economic policy today has come into existence and evolved more or less inherently and circumstantially out of pecking-order. This 'warm-blooded animal property' is destined however, to have only vestigial influence in 'the ultimate
course of human progression'; in time, consequently, the 'nature' and structure of government/economy will be significantly different from what it is today. (-from The Nature and Course of Human Evolution as The Basis of
Economic Policy). This thesis is developed in two, very short monographs: (Pecking Order, Competition and Institution ... and 'Sustainable Resource Use' ... under Thus-far Human Evolution.] |
What economists 'do' primarily, is report what physical and 'at-large' constitution has generally resulted from human endeavor (production, distribution, consumption) and what may be done or perhaps what 'should' be done towards (generally) sustaining or 'improving' it in something of a 'properly continuing', hominid-being(*2) vein. What economists do not do in 'theorizing how to best optimize' such endeavor then, is consider the implications of intrinsic aristocratization -of 'successively increasing, higher orders of idlemind-occupation' with likely decreasing employability for some body of continuing population. -'Sooner-and-better' or later, but inevitably, economists (and 'aristocratizing' society) will be asked 'To what end -especially hominid-being, the system can bear the production, distribution and consumption of what?'. In this respect, the substance of economics taught today has become so 'ivory tower' removed from its evolutionary human basis that off-stage, behind-the-scenes academe is often occupied with what can only be identified as hermeneutics in 'institutional, heterodox, behavioral, feminine' and other such 'denominational sub-speciation'. [There is a 'nature and course of human evolution', and it is determined by how we populate the earth and how that population uses the resource/environment -lifestyle and the quality of life. As of yet however, there is no academe anywhere pursuing such an intrinsically science-based inquiry and futurology, |
one, in other words, that cannot but eventually reject the 'propriety' of such as our 'American free-enterprise capitalist democracy' and 'the right to make as much money as one can and spend it as he choose' -'natural rights and freedoms' all -and
religious belief all. This 'nature and course', further, is characterizable by that 'lifestyle-and-quality' becoming increasingly esoteric and intellectual under successively diminishing 'sustainable resource use'. -'Lifestyle and the
quality of life' as we know it today, in other words, is unmaintainable under 'sustainable resource use'.]
In effect, the criterion by which virtually all autonomy has 'hominid-being' governed -traditional economy if one prefers- has been 'wrong' with respect to intrinsic aristocratization where there is no such thing as a 'right' way to run an economy, call it democracy, meritocracy or any other noumenalism. The idea of 'certain natural freedoms' -that 'One has the right to earn as much as he can and spend it in any way he choose' for example, even within constraints of arbitrarily any relatively fixed form of government, is based entirely upon precedents of an evolving mankind diasporating into an uninhabited resource/environment -comparatively primitive, a situation no longer 'unqualifiedly true' for a mankind whose increasing idlemind-time is occupied not by classical pecking-ordered mechanisms but by the nature of that occupation and 'what the system can bear'. |
feedback? perryb@condition.org