Meaningful Economics

Abstract

Economics has a problem. It cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. It models representations of optimal agents, not flesh-and-blood human beings in ordinary life. Meaningful Economics is about understanding the principles of economics—the exchange of goods and services, the specialization that trade makes possible, and the system of property that undergirds both—in their origins and outcomes rather than exclusively in their consequences. It explains the roots of conduct, and not merely its economic effects, by going to the human capacity for moral sentiments that prompt human beings to act. The book is about what makes meaningfulness the very core of economics. You read that correctly. Meaning and value and purpose have everything to do with traditional talk of economics. Economic science, including, behavioral economics, unintentionally, proceeds as if the human mind does not matter. The origins of our actions—ideas—do indeed matter. They make us human. They make us beings who imagine our futures and who use language to achieve what we wish for. Economics and ethics are, in fact, two sides of the same coin, and, moreover, we can study both sides at the same time. We can study the costs and benefits of our decisions and our motives and goals in an integrated, humanly way. The book builds a science of economics that retains the human mind.