Comments on: Capitalism and Human Nature

By: Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 23:59:00 +0000

Man, there’s so much that’s been said here. As you’ll see from my site, I am a big fan of EP and I think it has a tremendous value to mankind, even if it’s fuzzy. I’ve responded to the post at Mixed Memory. Check it out.

http://www.enlightenedcaveman.com/2005/02/zero-sum-versus-wealth-creation.html

By: bjr@yahoo.com

bjr@yahoo.com — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 18:49:00 +0000

http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/02/how-evolutionary-psychology-can-make.html

By: Gareth

Gareth — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:06:00 +0000

Oh, and didn’t social scientists save the Galaxy from thousands of years of barbarism by building a Foundation at Terminus and another one at the opposite end of the Galaxy? Or they would have, if it hadn’t have been for the Mule and those long pointless sequels.

By: Steve Horwitz

Steve Horwitz — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:24:00 +0000

Just a quick comment:

China has moved increasingly toward market-oriented institutions, slowly but surely. Were they to do so more seriously, and were they to unleash similar freedoms in research and other places, there is no doubt that they would shoot up the growth curve.

Don’t know about the Chinese soc sci community, but given the repressiveness that regime still creates, I wouldn’t be surprised if that soc sci community is largely underground and very quiet about conclusions that threaten the power of the Party.

By: monkyboy

monkyboy — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:31:00 +0000

Interesting stuff, Steve and Gareth.

What to make of China’s recent economic success? A different path to wealth, or….? They might make it on modern economic institutions alone. Is there much of a Chinese social science community?

By: Gareth

Gareth — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:19:00 +0000

monkyboy: I did some work on Victorian intellectual history, and I think the broad acceptance of the ideas of laissez faire among the 19th century elites, and the correlative transoformation of the common law (and, to some degree, the continental civil codes) was a result of the classical economists’ influence. Only the British Empire really embraced free trade, but that was a big only in those days.

A lesser example of effective use of social science is the existence of an insurance/ risk management industry. The Cato types won’t agree, but I suspect that Keynes’ discoveries about aggregate demand have had similar beneficial impacts. If you count epidemiology as a social science, then there’s more.

Of course, there are also all the malign effects of false social scientific theories…

By: Steve Horwitz

Steve Horwitz — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:16:00 +0000

Oooooops, that last post was mine.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:15:00 +0000

Monkyboy wrote:

To be sure, a large portion of our prosperity is due to the scientists, engineers and tinkerers who developed the tools that created our affluence.

Many of the social structures required, like the English East Indies Trading Company, were already in place before Smith and Ricardo were born. In a sense, they just commented on what had already occurred.

My feeling is we would still be prosperous without them, we just wouldn’t be as sure why…

Sorry, but this won’t wash with history. Many cultures had the science etc before we did, but they haven’t achieved our affluence. The point is that wealth and its associated well-being comes from innovation, but innovation requires science *and market institutions.* You can have all the brilliant scientists you want, and all the tinkerers under heaven, but unless they have the freedom to explore their ideas and, just as importantly, the freedom to bring those ideas to the market to serve consumers, science will never lead to a higher standard of living.

Science is necessary but not sufficient for the West’s wellbeing. Science needs the institutions of capitalism for humans to flourish.

What made the West rich are those institutions, both economic and political, not the scientists. A good non-technical introduction to this argument is Rosenberg and Birdzell’s “How the West Grew Rich.”

By: bjr@yahoo.com

bjr@yahoo.com — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 08:55:00 +0000

http://bostonreview.net/BR28.6/marcus.html

By: McClain

McClain — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 12:07:00 +0000

Uh, let’s see…we got some nouns, verbs, gerunds….
Less facetiously, Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” is a good book.

By: bjr@yahoo.com

bjr@yahoo.com — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 08:15:00 +0000

Good luck analyzing language into its constituent elements.

By: monkyboy

monkyboy — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 20:02:00 +0000

Interesting question Gareth. To be sure, a large portion of our prosperity is due to the scientists, engineers and tinkerers who developed the tools that created our affluence.

My feeling is we would still be prosperous without them, we just wouldn’t be as sure why…

By: Gareth

Gareth — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:54:00 +0000

I’d say you can only understand more complex phenomena in terms of less complex. You can only understand chemistry in terms of physics, molecular biology in terms of chemistry, cell biology in terms of molecular biology and so on.

monkyboy: What about post-industrial revolution affluence? Could we have achieved it without Adam Smith and David Ricardo?

By: McClain

McClain — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:51:00 +0000

If “you can’t understand more complex phenomena in terms of less complex,” then in what terms DO you propose to understand it?
Only understanding complex phenomena in terms of equal or greater complexity? This seems self-evidently false.
Although it would make grade-school math classes more fun: “Children, I need you to take this equation and turn it into a much more complicated equation.”
English classes would suck, though: “Your book report must be as long as, or longer than, the original book. And you must use more vocabulary words than your author.” Though, come to think of it, that seems to describe a lot of po-mo lit-crit.
I just think you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We DO need to beware of ‘just-so stories.’ Cultural evolution is Lamarckian, not Darwinian. This doesn’t mean evolution is false, nor sterile, nor that we can learn and infer nothing at all from our animal heritage.

By: monkyboy

monkyboy — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:45:00 +0000

Hard science has many accomplishments it can be proud of, including the recent landing of a probe on a moon of Satun that’s sending back data.

I would be interested to know what Social Scientists, including Evolutionary Psychologists, consider their greatest accomplishments?