I wonder if anyone in the world has ever objected to economic policies or recommendations based on anything other than distributional concerns or possibly other ethical concerns lying outside neoclassical welfare economics? That’s what the entire debate about real economic policies and issues is nearly always about, isn’t it? Who is getting what, winners and losers, someone suspecting someone isn’t getting what he or she should be getting as a matter of ethics? How many real world economic debates take place in a context in which everyone involved says they don’t see any distributional issues at all, they think everyone has exactly as much economic power as they should have, they see no other ethical issues relating to the resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs or desires based on economic power in the marketplace of the sort that lie outside economic theory, but they think we should jump in and interfere with what people choose to do with their economic power for shits and giggles or because they just can’t figure out the simplistic normative arguments of economic theory that apply to that situation? Because you know that’s really the only context neoclassical welfare economics, properly interpreted, is capable of addressing, right? It’s not really applicable to policy questions involving distributional issues or more broadly ethical issues that go beyond those found in economic theory. And yet you may have noticed conservative economists presume to offer advice on pretty much every economic issue and policy that comes around the bend, including the most controversial, blithely assuming away all ethical issues at the outset, triumphantly proclaiming their little findings while arrogantly shutting down all sincere attempts to discuss the real and often complicated ethical issues involved, often in the most childish way possible by flashing their supposed mathematical credentials at everyone. Annoying, isn’t it? Academic economists and academic philosophers seem incapable or uninterested in rocking the boat. They clearly have no intention of lifting a finger. And yet a great deal of damage can be done to a society when people refuse to discuss real economic and especially ethical issues relating to economics in good faith. One can end up with a great many angry, frustrated people who may go looking for answers in the oddest of places. You should help me fight bad economics.
