Search For Economics Without Depression

Ben Li / Wen

"Economics is a melancholy science", which has a long history. According to historical records, Thomas Karel, the first British writer and historian, delivered a speech in 1848. At that time, he was hurt by Chen Dao: "this social science is not a happy science, but a chagrin. It finds out the secrets of the universe in" supply and demand ", and reduces the duties of human rulers to make people behave on their own. I would say that this science is not a pleasant science as some science we have heard of, no, it is not. It is melancholy, lonely, and indeed a rather sad and painful science. "

Carlile's exhortation seems to be worrying and ironic in the process of economics promoting the development of human economy and becoming more and more important in promoting social progress. However, the situation is changing, and after the global financial crisis in 2008, the change is faster and faster. Carlile's words are like a magic spell or a ghost wandering around the earth again.

The origin of wealth. Data map

In recent years, two popular words related to "Queen" have touched people's hearts and poked pain. It is just an expression of the return of "melancholy economics". One is the famous saying of the queen of hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "You have to run as hard as you can to stay where you are." Zweig commented on the French broken queen Marie: "she was too young at that time to know all the gifts of fate, and had already marked the price in secret."

The former sentence was detonated by the famous "Luo fat", which was paid for knowledge. It is undeniable that this anxiety or melancholy is not out of nothing. Too superstitious "invisible hand" brings unrestrained social Darwinism, and the result is a loss of life without any care.

The queen is still melancholy.

It is time to reflect comprehensively on the melancholy brought about by economics. After the economic works of Das Kapital and other economic works sold well in the world, the newly published "origin of wealth" is a more systematic and unique book in this respect. Personally, the book not only provides a new perspective on the origin of wealth, but also a new wealth of nations. Its "new" lies in the system's consideration of the above two queens related core issues: equality and sustainability of wealth. Therefore, in my recommendation to the book, I wrote: "this is not only an ambitious work, but also a conscience."

Advanced values also need advanced methodological expression. The most amazing thing about Eric Beinhok's book is that it bypasses the dichotomy of market economy and planned economy, and explores another way to explore a more essential economic core from another level, that is, technology. Regard physical technology, social technology and business plan as three different, but interrelated and co operative design spaces, and create the order that people see in the technological, social and economic world. To this end, the complex economics advocated by the book has also made full use of Moore's law, thus widely applying computing power to this system, and introducing new mathematical tools and statistical tools from physics, biology and other fields to help people better understand the attributes of the economy as an open dynamic system.

What is more daring is that the introspection from the mainstream economics is mainly based on the current analysis framework and constraints of economics, such as information economics, behavioral economics, institutional economics developed by information asymmetry, behavioral irrationality, transaction costs and so on. However, the core of economic thought in the origin of wealth is that the current economics is not thorough enough to understand and simulate the scientific system of physics and biology, and there is a serious lack of connection between them. And these are the foundations of economics.

In other words, from the perspective of the origin of wealth, I am afraid that the problem of the queen of hearts is that we can not simply blame social Darwinism without really penetrating the theory of evolution. The tragedy of the queen of the decapitated lies in the narrow and short-sighted use of physics, rather than the abandonment of the physical foundation of the analytical framework of economics.

Therefore, the book explores the second laws and entropy of thermodynamics with a large amount of space, and reinterprets strategy, organization, finance and policy from the perspective of co evolution. How can we reconstruct the relationship between evolution and physics? The book "perspective five: the economy is an evolutionary system" writes: according to Hollander's research, "evolution will achieve a correct balance between automatic exploration and development"; "evolution is very close to achieving the optimal equilibrium."

Yes, the core idea of the book is "wealth originates from evolution", and it is believed that this evolution is essentially design driven, and gives three evolutionary forces: business design, physical technology and social technology.

In recent years, the author has paid special attention to the moral and ethical issues in economics. For a long time, he ponder over how to solve the fossilization caused by the alienation of economic theory. Theory itself provides a benchmark, tool or convenience for analysis and discussion, but in specific applications, we can not ignore people's sense, values and grasp of realistic situations. This requires the complex economic thinking embodied in the origin of wealth.

It is not just economists who are discussing these "no longer melancholy economics". In August 19, 2019, the chief executive of 181 top American companies signed the declaration of corporate purpose on the Business Roundtable of the commercial organization of the United States. It reformed the basic content of the company's undertaking based on the maximization of stockholders' rights and interests, and redefined it as "enterprises have a common commitment to all stakeholders on the basis of maintaining their own business objectives". This, of course, is conducive to evolution and sustainable "equilibrium", and is also a progress made by the business community based on the complexity of business and economic complexity.

The economics of "no longer melancholy" is bound to be difficult. New economic systems and business civilization still seem far fetched. But think of Thomas Karel's other famous saying: "every great thing seems impossible at the beginning."