Book: "Economyths Ten Ways Economics Gets It Wrong"

The challenge of our time is that our myth is that we have no myths.


Irony is, that we are still a deeply mythological culture and it is high time that our culture recognize the false premises and untenable myths that define our economic paradigm.

This is most recently highlighted by a blog from The Capital Institute which mentions a book on the myths of our economic viewpoint. Here's the blog entry:


"A Capital Institute shout out to Leland Lehrman for sharing with us David Orrell's eloquent cri du coeur found at the conclusion of Economyths, 10 Ways Economics Gets It Wrong. Leland calls the book "a brilliant reconstruction of economics that covers gender, happiness, fairness and other perspectives on economics in intellectually and mathematically rigorous ways without becoming unreadable." "


From the book:

"So, students. Decision time. You live at what many believe is a bifurcation point in human history. You've seen all the graphs with lines curving up like a ski jump. Human population. Gross domestic product. Species extinction. Carbon emissions. Inequality. Resource shortages. You know that something has to give. You've got an idea that the price isn't right. Maybe you're even suspicious that if the world economy does turn out to be a Ponzi scheme, you or your children are a little bit late to the game."

"You therefore stand at a fork in the road. You can take the orthodox route -- and risk ending up with a qualification as impressive as a degree in Marxist ideology right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or you can take a chance on regime shift by speaking up, questioning your teachers, being open to disruptive ideas, and generally acting as an agent of change. You can insist that the economy is a complex, dynamic, networked system -- and demand the tools to understand it. You can point out that the economy is unfair, unstable, and unsustainable -- and demand the skills to heal it. You can tell the oracles that they have failed. You can go in and break the machine. And then you can do something new."

I'm heartened by the fact that so many people have economics on the mind, and are independently coming to similar conclusions.

I trust that in coming years our economy will look much different, and work much better for the well being of humanity and all living beings on the planet.