Immediate consequence the second: Austrian school economics, in its reliance on allowing markets to come to equilibrium on their own, is inhuman.
I suspect all economics is inhuman. I suspect that any complex economy that connects millions or billions of people is going to be incomprehensible and inhuman. By far the best explanation I’ve heard of this thought is by Cosma Shalizi.
The key bit here is the conclusion:
There is a fundamental level at which Marx’s nightmare vision is right: capitalism, the market system, whatever you want to call it, is a product of humanity, but each and every one of us confronts it as an autonomous and deeply alien force. Its ends, to the limited and debatable extent that it can even be understood as having them, are simply inhuman. The ideology of the market tell us that we face not something inhuman but superhuman, tells us to embrace our inner zombie cyborg and lose ourselves in the dance. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or run screaming.
But, and this is I think something Marx did not sufficiently appreciate, human beings confront all the structures which emerge from our massed interactions in this way. A bureaucracy, or even a thoroughly democratic polity of which one is a citizen, can feel, can be, just as much of a cold monster as the market. We have no choice but to live among these alien powers which we create, and to try to direct them to human ends. It is beyond us, it is even beyond all of us, to find “a human measure, intelligible to all, chosen by all”, which says how everyone should go.
A bureaucracy, or even a thoroughly democratic polity of which one is a citizen, can feel, can be, just as much of a cold monster as the market.
This is a great way to express it. I was thinking about something similar, but could not express it like this.
The essence of the problem is, all “systems of human interaction” are not humans. A market is not a human. An election is not a human. An organization is not a human. Etc. Complaining that we are governed by non-humans is essentially complaining that there is more than one human, and that the interaction between humans is not itself a human. Yes, it is true. Yes, it can (and probably will) have horrible consequences. It just does not depend on any specific school of economics, or anything like this.
I suspect all economics is inhuman. I suspect that any complex economy that connects millions or billions of people is going to be incomprehensible and inhuman. By far the best explanation I’ve heard of this thought is by Cosma Shalizi.
The key bit here is the conclusion:
I suspect this sub-thread implicitly defined “human” as “generating warm fuzzies”. There are, um, problems with this definition.
This is a great way to express it. I was thinking about something similar, but could not express it like this.
The essence of the problem is, all “systems of human interaction” are not humans. A market is not a human. An election is not a human. An organization is not a human. Etc. Complaining that we are governed by non-humans is essentially complaining that there is more than one human, and that the interaction between humans is not itself a human. Yes, it is true. Yes, it can (and probably will) have horrible consequences. It just does not depend on any specific school of economics, or anything like this.