Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 10:07AM | in Governance Humans: Not all we're cracked up to be
David Brooks discovers the primary cause of the global economic crisis: people just aren't as smart as we thought.
Trust, faith, human nature? Where is public policy heading?
Reason is not like a rider atop a horse. Instead, each person's mind contains a panoply of instincts, strategies, intuitions, emotions, memories and habits, which vie for supremacy. An irregular, idiosyncratic and largely unconscious process determines which of these internal players gets to control behavior at any instant. Context - which stimulus triggers which response - matters a lot...
An economy is a society of trust and faith. A recession is a mental event, and every recession has its own unique spirit. This recession was caused by deep imbalances and is propelled by a cascade of fundamental insecurities. You can pump hundreds of billions into the banks, but insecure bankers still won't lend. You can run up gigantic deficits, hire road builders and reduce the unemployment rate from 8 percent to 7 percent, but insecure people will still not spend and invest...
Mechanistic thinkers on the right and left pose as rigorous empiricists. But empiricism built on an inaccurate view of human nature is just a prison.
Trust, faith, human nature? Where is public policy heading?
Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 10:07AM | in Governance 
Reader Comments (1)
Sometime after reading about the Grameen Bank, I found my way to Herman Daly, talking about 'Homo Economicus' and the one-dimensional human being considered in conventional economic theory. Brooks seems to be on the same tack - arguing for an economics that sees people as complete beings - physical, mental, and spiritual.