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The Efficient Drowning of a Nation: Is Economics Education Warping Gifted Minds and Eroding Human Prospects?

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Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds

Abstract

Humanity has put itself in great peril, as the impending demise of the nation of Kiribati due to global warming illustrates. This failure to act is in part due to the influence of mainstream economics. Economics is a challenging discipline that attracts many gifted individuals. Yet during their training, mainstream economists adopt, often unwittingly and despite believing their profession to be exemplar of objectivity and dispassionate analysis, a deeply problematic ethical framework and worldview. This is shown by examining the analysis that mainstream economists have contributed to policy discussions on global warming, the profession's unfailing devotion to economic growth, and the evaluative criterion that underlies so much economic theorizing and analysis, namely economic efficiency. This chapter then explores how it is that the many gifted individuals who have become economists, often out of concern for the disadvantaged, could have been educated and socialized to adopt uncritically a morally problematic analytical framework and to provide analysis and policy advice with little reflection on its moral implications. Some changes to economics education might provide gifted future economists more sophisticated ethical bearings and improve the likelihood that their skills will contribute to finding more equitable and sustainable solutions to the pressing ecological and social problems confronting humanity.

… goods follow dollar votes and not the greatest need. A rich man's cat may drink the milk that a poor boy needs to remain healthy. Does this happen because the market is failing? Not at all, for the market mechanism is doing its job – putting goods in the hands of those who have the dollar votes.

Samuelson and Nordhaus (2005, p. 38)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Economists are fond of pointing to a trade-off between equity and efficiency, but the matter is not so simple. For a technical treatment, see Greenwald and Stiglitz (1986) and Stiglitz (1991). I sidestep the trade-off issue here.

  2. 2.

    International Herald Tribune Online, “Leader of disappearing nation says climate change is an issue of survival, not economics.” At: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/05/asia/AS-GEN-New-Zealand-World-Environment-Day.php. Accessed June 28, 2008.

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  1. Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, Green College University of British Columbia, 6201, Cecil Green Park Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z1

    Tom L. Green

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    Green, T.L. (2009). The Efficient Drowning of a Nation: Is Economics Education Warping Gifted Minds and Eroding Human Prospects?. In: Cross, T., Ambrose, D. (eds) Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89368-6_6

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