Even Jared Diamond and Robin Hahnel Nod

Last week I began reading Diamond's new book, Collapse, and Robin Hahnel's The ABC's of Political Economy.

Professor Diamond should read Hahnel's book. I personally think his Guns, Germs, and Steel is an argument for a sort of socialism--though I'm pretty sure he wouldn't put it that way.

But, there's a shocking bit of non-argumen in the new book.... It really stopped me in my tracks....early on in Collapse. Diamond is talking about the moral responsibility of businessmen to shareholders...

all as if there were no such word/concept as STAKEHOLDERS

as if there were not a little problem in classical economics with EXTERNALITIES....

Another good source on the problem (which I have not described but only gestured to) is philosopher of science Daniel J. Hausman's "When Jack and Jill Make a Deal", available here: http://philosophy.wisc.edu/hausman/papers/jack-and-jill.htm

In brief, the problem is that every transaction has costs that are not paid by the people doing business. Classical economics ignores that fact. Hence, your responsibility does not stop at the door of the shareholder, but goes further, to all of the people your actions affect. That's the morality of the situation, not its economics--as classically construed.

In the dialectic of Diamond's book that little phrase--responsibility to shareholders--was a conversation/argument stopper. It shouldn't have been. The story does not end there.

Perhaps, a more sophisticated view will emerge later in the book. If so, I will apologize and correct at this blog.

As for Hahnel, I'm not sure he has always chosen the most perspicuous form of notation for the more technical parts of his book. He's got a variable 'a' that's not italicized but is not English and when you've got a sentence of English merging into a formula beginning with an "a" where it's not English it is a bit maddening. I keep expecting that the "a" is an indefinite article.

That's a sort of sloppiness. I'm afraid it seems to me indicative of the more technical parts of the book--supposedly accessible to anyone with a high school education....

Another flaw is the index. More later.