Frequent commentator John Rove makes the point that economics has long been known as the "dismal science" following Carlye's characterization of Malthus' totally wrong prediction concerning food production and population growth. The inevitability of famine and death was, he argued, part of God's plan for humanity. Malthus decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to curb population growth and increase industry, which is to say less sex and more work.
In 1776 Smith published The Wealth of Nations in which, among other points, he argued that maldistribution led to a situation in which men of great wealth could exchange the "maintenance of a thousand men" for a pair of diamond buckles and in so doing out of concupiscence and wrongly directed amour propre destroy their own political power. Malthus could have, in other words, argued for a more just distribution of the things of this world in keeping with Christ's ethical teachings, Malthus was -- after all -- a curate. He could also have taken a look around the "Low Countries" and elsewhere and seen the work scientists and states dedicated, for reasons both humane and not so much, to improve crop yields.
Although others disputed Malthus gloomy and anti-human views, his methods, relentlessly focusing on the wrong set of "facts," ignoring the innovation all around him, and trying to rob life of its sweetness, are an important part of the methods of economists who, you know, want to rob life of its sweetness, ignore reality, and, generally, argue that things have to get worse because the system that we now have is "natural" and fiddling with it to produce a more just outcome is to go against laws of nature.
I wonder what thesef laisser faire folks think of the law of gravity, which -- as I understand it -- shows that things in nature tend to fall down. We shouldn't build skyscrapers or try to fly because, after all, it is a natural law that things fall down and to fiddle with that is to violate natural laws, to say nothing of improving crop yields and birth control.
I remain with Aristotle, at least on the zoon politikon thingy.
Great point about the law of gravity. I for one will never go in a sky scraper again
ReplyDeleteI sort of stole the idea from Rousseau's response to someone or another's complain about one or another of his texts that Rousseau failed to understand that lots of the behavior he castigated was "natural" and Rousseau responded, more or less, that civilization required suppressing or striving to suppress natural instincts. A point made in that Simpson's episode where everyone let it all hangout and Springfield went to the dogs.
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