Here’s a question for you, do you think economists should serve as ethical arbiters of society? That is to say, should economists resolve controversial normative or ethical issues and tell people what economic arrangements are ethically optimal, or go around them to policymakers if the people are too dense to understand or simply disagree?
Just curious because it seems a common enough view. I’ve had people, economists I suspect but haven’t confirmed, tell me the people themselves are not fit to entertain such weighty matters. I’ve had people tell me someone must decide what’s optimal and wonder if not economists, then who? I infer from such commentary some people do, indeed, feel economists should serve as ethical arbiters of society.
It’s interesting to me because neoclassical welfare economics was specifically designed to avoid controversial ethical issues and prevent economists becoming the ethical arbiters of society. That’s the reason it’s structured the way it is, the reason “utility” is defined the way it is. Well, I suppose I should clarify that. That’s the explicit intent. Given the proven ability of neoclassical welfare economics to support error, misinterpretation, bad economics, one can only ponder the implicit intent.
The perspective on what economists should be doing consistent with the explicit, ostensible motivating spirit of neoclassical welfare economics is for economists to avoid controversial ethical judgments and defer to the changeable views of the people and democratic government. What is “optimal” as far as real instances of economic systems and economics outcomes, distributional ethics, the extent of the market, what to do about expressions of preferences under conditions of ignorance and irrationality, the resolution of interpersonal conflicts of preferences, the allocation of scarce resources, is not an objective fact, not some unchanging facet of nature we must discover. It’s a social decision based on changing and evolving ethical beliefs that must be determined democratically over and over again.
Some people profess to understand and support neoclassical welfare economics, but they ignore its true ethos in favor of personal power, using neoclassical economics inappropriately to promulgate particular subjective ethics, typically their own, but sometimes those of some patron or esteemed other, in rhetorical, underhanded ways. Good economics uses neoclassical welfare economics correctly. It elucidates the role of controversial normative or ethical values in evaluating economic systems and outcomes and highlights the need for popular input from democratic government. Bad economics uses neoclassical welfare economics incorrectly. It fails to accurately identify and evaluate the value inputs in the theory, it adds exogenous values in practice, it attempts to wrest control of normative economic decisions away from democratic government.
We should all fight bad economics and support good economics. Economists above all others have a social responsibility to do so, but if they fail in that important task, and just for the record I believe a great many economists fail in that important task, others must be ready to take up the fight. It’s important. Bad economics is anti-democratic, toxic, cancerous. It’s not something we should be complacent about.
