G'day Brad, Thanks for this: >I think famines work better--they make the point that if your labor-time >endowment has no value, then your utility has no weight in the social >welfare function that the market maximizes, and so you starve to death: the >market's equilibrium weighs each person's preferences roughly by the market >value of his/her endowment. > >I think famines work better because starvation is not a willed and desired >objective of anyone in the market--while mass death certainly was a willed >and desired objective of those who ran the show during the "final >solution." "Final solution" examples leave people thinking, "yes, this >market-as-a-social-allocation-mechanism does indeed efficiently produce the >goals that society has chosen." Famine examples--I think, at least--probe a >little bit deeper because the market also plays a powerful role in >"choosing" "society's" "goals." A terrific supplement, I reckon (although I don't doubt a few famines might have been deliberately orchestrated) - to complete the mutual constitution stressed in the slowly reawakening term 'political economy' (notice how it's back on the covers of so many text-books? Gotta be good, I reckon). Very slightly tangentially, I am reminded of a cute Joan Robinson line: "utility is the quality in commodities that makes individuals want to buy them, and the fact that individuals want to buy commodities shows that they have utility." And then I think of ol' man Galbraith (I find free associations like this come easily to me when I'm dog-tired - but mebbe you gotta be dog-tired to follow 'em ... ), who adds another dimension - as demand is consciously and necessarily 'managed' by corporations, even the apparently mindless market's role in 'choosing' 'society's' 'goals' has a degree of conscious authorship about it. With apologies to Woody Allen, economics is only confusing if it's done right, eh? Time to greet the new day as if it's not the old one ... Cheers, Rob.
