The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight – as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. Something similar is required to-day in economics.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory (1936)
A Non-Euclidean World
March 16, 2013 by Kasey Dufresne
Economics involves the study of choice. Our facts involve the behaviour of animals that vary significantly in terms of preferences, etc. but more importantly from a philosophical point of view, struggle to know what is really in their interests beyond the satisfaction of basic needs involving physiological and psychological states.
I submit that what should be the key concern for today’s aspiring economists is an insistence to be useful to real decision-makers in the markets – to get out in the field and get dirty, ruthlessly pursue opportunities to chew through operational data, bang out models and linear programs like they were going out of fashion, participate and transform business activity.
We have everything we could possibly need or want thanks to the giants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If the theory depends on rational behaviour of firms, then demonstrate to business leaders how to be rational. If you are concerned about the injustice inherent in an economic system, get involved in the fight to change it.
It is high time that economists make themselves indispensable to the real decision-makers in the economies they wish to impact. The decision to employ, to invest, to pay dividends, to purchase new capital, to enter new markets, etc. are made by business managers, not professors or policy pundits. That is the source of economic growth, and economists are ideally equipped to help them.