[MD] Economics

[david buchanan]

Jan Anders Andersson said:
.... Economics is not about values, economics is about numbers. Economics is a way to AVOID values by labeling values with numbers and brands. 


dmb quotes Pirsig:

“Money and celebrity are fame and fortune, traditionally paired as twin forces in the dynamic generation of social values. Both fame and fortune are huge dynamic parameters that give society its shape and meaning. We have whole departments of universities, in fact, whole colleges, devoted to the study of economics, that is fortune, but what do we have that is similarly devoted to the study of fame?” (Lila 258)

According to the MOQ, fame and fortune are social level values. 
Economists certainly use numbers and other quantitative forms of analysis but economics is a social science, which is to say that the subject matter is a certain, limited range of human behavior. According to the MOQ, our recent history is a clash of values, namely social level values as opposed to intellectual values.

“The hurricane of social forces released by the overthrow of society by intellect [during the Victorian period] was most strongly felt in Europe, particularly Germany, where the effects of World War I were the most devastating. Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of intellect. Nowhere were the intellectuals more intense in their determination to overthrow the old order. Nowhere did the old order become more intent on finding ways to destroy the excesses of the new intellectualism."

"The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of the German volk was fueled by it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of intellectual freedom was driven by it.”

"Intellect has its own patterns and goals that are as independent of society as society is independent of biology. A value metaphysics makes it possible to see that there’s a conflict between intellect and society that’s just as fierce as the conflict between society and biology or the conflict between biology and death. Biology beat death billions of years ago. Society beat biology thousands of years ago. But intellect and society are still fighting it out, and that is the key to an understanding of both the Victorians and the twentieth century. What distinguishes the Victorian culture from the culture of today is that the Victorians were the last people to believe that patterns of intellect are subordinate to patterns of society. What held the Victorian pattern together was a social code, not an intellectual one. They called it morals, but really it was just a social code. As a code it was just like their ornamental cast-iron furniture: expensive looking, cheaply made, brittle, cold, and uncomfortable."
"The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of intellect. The one dominating question of this century has been, “Are the social patterns of our world going to run our intellectual life, or is our intellectual life going to run the social patterns?” And in that battle, the intellectual patterns have won."

"If one realizes that the essence of the Victorian value pattern was an elevation of society above everything else, then all sorts of things fall into place. What we today call Victorian hypocrisy was not regarded as hypocrisy. It was a virtuous effort to keep one’s thoughts within the limits of social propriety. In the Victorian’s mind quality and intellectuality were not related to one another in such a way that quality had to stand the test of intellectual meaning. The test of anything in the Victorian mind was, “Does society approve?”
To put social forms to the test of intellectual value was “ungracious,” and those Victorians really did believe in the social graces. They valued them as the highest attributes of civilization. “Grace” is an interesting word with an important history, and the fact that they used it the way they did makes it even more interesting. A “state of grace” as defined by the Calvinists was a state of religious “enlightenment.” But by the time the Victorians were through with it, “grace” had changed from “godliness” to mean something close to “social polish.”
To the early Calvinists and to ourselves too this debasement of the word seems outrageous, but it becomes understandable when one sees that within the Victorian pattern of values society was God. As Edith Wharton said, Victorians feared scandal worse than they feared disease. They had lost their faith in the religious values of their ancestors and put their faith in society instead. It was only by wearing the corset of society that one kept oneself from lapsing back into a condition of evil. Formalism and prudery were attempts to suppress evil by denying it a place in one’s “higher” thoughts, and for the Victorian, higher spiritually meant higher socially. There was no distinction between the two. “God is a gentleman through and through, and in all probability, Episcopal too.” To be a gentleman was as close as you would ever get, while on earth, to God."