Belated Debt Post: Ancient Efficient Markets Hypotheses — Crooked Timber - The Diigo Meta page

• 05 Mar 12
  

  Todd Suomela

  "And yet: human beings (not just economists), when called upon to explain how society works, have a strange tendency to reach first for efficient market hypotheses, and to hold on like grim death. Natural or even cosmic orders of orderly payback. That’s the ticket. We are ‘in debt’ to the gods, or our parents, or society. Graeber is quick to point out the inadequacies of these metaphors."

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  • Graeber appreciates that you find this sort of thinking everywhere, at all times, but he also wants to hammer home that the tendency of economists to think this way is blinkered and parochial. And bourgeouis and modern. It’s not exactly a contradiction to have it both ways. It may be perfectly true that this style of thinking is highly characteristic of economists and the modern, commercial bourgeoisie. But this isn’t a distinguishing characteristic. What Graeber thinks is that everyone is wrong, not just economists in the grip of the myth of the double-coincidence. Folk thinking and econ thinking are the same. And wrong, according to Graeber (and Plato before him).

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