[The French neoliberal economist Guy Sorman admits that the market is full of irrational behaviour, but is quick to add that ‘it would be preposterous to use behavioral economics to justify restoring excessive state regulations. After all, the state is no more rational than the individual, and its actions can have enormously destructive consequences.’ He goes on: ... The best of all possible economic systems is indeed imperfect. Whatever the truths uncovered by economic science, the free market is finally only the reflection of human nature, itself hardly perfectible. Rarely was the function of ideology described in clearer terms: to defend the existing system against any serious critique, legitimising it as a direct expression of human nature. LRB 14 November 2008 Slavoj Žižek Use Your Illusions 12:39 PM]
[People, real people, feature in all of Adam Smith’s works and their influence on events is, to coin a phrase, highly visible, and without illusions on Smith’s part, he reported that if left to themselves they still have to contend with those among them who interpret their self interest in a manner not allowed for in modern economic models, not out of their ignorance, but precisely driven by their native intelligence. That’s why Adam Smith made such a play about the need for justice in any society, barbarian or opulent. I was at dinner last night with three distinguished economists and I remarked during one conversation that human nature is the one universal constant we can be certain of when contemplating any economy, including its forms of government. Remember Human Nature!
from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy]
[You're right, Tim. I didn't see this coming. And I wasn't alone. People a lot smarter than I am didn't see it coming either. So what happened? I should mention first that the few people who did see it coming were not necessarily any wiser than anyone else. Some of them had predicted nine of the last five recessions. A stopped clock is right twice a day. Even those who claim to have foreseen this mess couldn't make the case well enough to alarm very many other people. Where was I in 2005? (by Russell Roberts) from Cafe Hayek 10:27 AM]
[The clock, for example, acts on the work day and money, assisting in the transformation of labor into a commodity and a unit... What I tried to argue in the paper was that figures such as Žižek and Badiou are led to their particular problems precisely because they exclude the notion of actors (in Latour’s sense) and presuppose a structuralist model of the social where the social is something that both exists and explains, rather than something to be explained through the agency of actors. Between Networks and Structures
from Larval Subjects]
The evolutionary paradigm that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have presented contests this very assumption, “that human nature is the one universal constant we can be certain of,” and, instead, recommends a dynamic endeavor for surpassing it. [TNM] 7:53 AM
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