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Fredrick Welfare

Leading up to the Great Recession, there was a decided pressure on all homeowners to sell and upgrade their house. Many people sold and bought ‘more house.’ To claim that the housing bubble was not described or predicted is an incredulous statement. Even today, there are few total descriptions of the global economic totality and most indicators of change are abstract. That economists are unable or unwilling to determine a state of homeostasis which is affected by variations in human decisions or environmental impacts is a sign of naivete or secrecy. Humans do make evaluations of others on the basis… Read more »

Jeff Pooley

Wonderfully lucid discussion. One angle neglected, probably a sacrifice to concision, is the effect of economics’ rationality and utility-maximizing assumptions on public discourse and even individuals’ self-understanding. In a small way at least, economists’ descriptions have been self-fulfilling: we imagine ourselves, to some degree, as self-interested agent because economists have been describing us this way for decades.

Gerald Ferguson

I still do not see economic-social commentary dealing with dishonesty. It must be part of human decision making, rationalization, and gambling behavior. We all know now how often it occurs.

Austin Burbridge

This website refers to a “podcast” for “Social Sciences Bites” — but I couldn’t find any reference to a valid URL, eg, RSS feed, for such a podcast. The Twitter @philosophybites mentions a podcast and offers a link to http://www.socialsciencebites.com, but that is not a podcast URL. I looked up Social Sciences Bites in iTunes, and found a URL there. Assuming that it is, in fact, the same podcast referred to here (no way to confirm since there appears to be no mention of an iTunes entry on this website), here is the URL. Maybe someone should consider passing this along… Read more »

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