Thursday, July 27, 2017

Peter Söderbaum — Redefining economics in terms of multidimensional analysis and democracy

A proposed new theoretical perspective starts with a partly different definition of economics:
“Economics is multidimensional management of (limited) resources in a democratic society”
Why “multidimensional” management? Multidimensional goes against the one-dimensional analysis of neoclassical theory and method. “Monetary reductionism” is no longer accepted. The idea that we should put a monetary price on all impacts, ecosystem services included, to make them commensurable and tradeable, is abandoned. Instead impacts of different kinds are kept separate throughout analysis. And non-monetary impacts are viewed as being as “economic” as monetary ones. This may make analysis more complex but also more relevant.…
Bringing trans-disciplinarity, social value, and quality of life into economic thinking at the foundational level.
Why reference to a democratic society? When reading neoclassical introductory textbooks in economics it becomes clear that “democracy” is not a theme taken seriously. These texts rather reflect an emphasis on economists as experts, i.e. a kind of technocracy....
Real-World Economics Review Blog
Redefining economics in terms of multidimensional analysis and democracy
Peter Söderbaum | Professor Emeritus In Ecological Economics,
Mälardalen University, Sweden

1 comment:

Ryan Harris said...

No.
Nah.
A single simple optimal equilibrium to every economic problem that can be tightly approximated with a bid and offer price using empirical data collected in the marketplace to give unambiguous and ideology free answers to nearly all economic problems. We've never had free markets so y'all simply don't understand what is really possible if we liberalize market places fully.