Robert Johnson — Dancing in the Dark: Creating an Economics for the 21st Century

Ask an economist a simple question such as “What is economics supposed to do?” and you likely will get back a blank stare or an absurdly technical response filled with meaningless jargon. Typically you also will be told economics is “value free.” Many economists believe that economics involves just this kind of analysis: objective, dispassionate, apolitical, and unbiased.

However, this is clearly not the case [cognitive science reveals that facts and values are entangled at the level of brain functioning]. Without any substantive debate, economists routinely make recommendations and decisions about what does and doesn’t count in the world. Without admitting it, or even worse, at times without even knowing it, economists make powerful value judgments about what matters in our society.

While doing arithmetic may not be a biased process, deciding what gets included in the equation can be. Yet economists use theories that freeze human values inside antiseptic and sterile notions like “utility” (a technical euphemism that replaces all the nuance of human psychology with a simple process of mental math) while pretending that they are speaking objectively about how to increase wellbeing. Working in this way, economists are simply avoiding the question rather than addressing it.

The point is that economics is supposed to serve society. But fulfilling this goal means having real discussions about controversial and at times politically contentious topics, instead of hiding in the monastery and substituting technocratic dances for debate.

INET
Dancing in the Dark: Creating an Economics for the 21st Century
Robert Johnson | Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.
He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.