Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, The Undercover Economist, and Born to Run

[greekhoop]

The volunteer who lived at this site before me left his library here when he went back to the United States. He seems like a nice enough fella, but his tastes in literature are pretty questionable.

All of the books he left here fail in one way or another, from the mediocre and overrated (look even Aldous Huxley says he thinks its flawed), to the

Comments

[meruberri]

ahhh. I'm an Econ student I've taken three classes on the subject so far and even I can tell you that thesis is flawed. I could probably write a whole paper on how wrong he is. I'm not going to even go into it because it's 1am and I have class tomorrow.

But I will say Supply and Demand shouldn't take more than one chapter. unless he's introducing other concepts that tie in? but that seems like a bit of an over kill.

[greekhoop]

At least half the book was dedicated to discussing supply and demand. He was really big into using cutsey real-world examples, so the chapters were kind of set up in the forms of extended analogies (coffee shops, plots of farmland), followed by explanations of how they tie into supply and demand.

It was seriously way, WAY too much.

[helbling]

Just hopping by to say I love this article, and your writing style.

[greekhoop]

Thanks!

[intertribal]

Sadly, Mr. Econ Guy's economics are exactly, to the letter, what I was taught throughout my econ minor (at an ivy). The only classes I ever took that did not reinforce his thesis were focused on sustainable development. I in fact just heard that same argument (from the professor) in class on Tuesday.

[greekhoop]

Wow, I'm not an econ person, and I had no idea that this was a thing. Is it some kind of Communist backlash, maybe?

[intertribal]

Yeah, well, it's backlash against communism, Keynes (who wanted the government to do things to help people) and development economics - I guess since the '80s or so people have basically adopted the Milton Friedman school, which basically considers capitalism a pure and holy church - it can fix anything, and should not be interfered with, and if you have capitalism and you're still poor, that's cuz your market isn't free enough - so privatize, deregulate, do not spend government money on social services. They also teach you that comparative advantage is Holy Law, so poor countries should just specialize in "what they're good at" (cheap, high-labor sweatshop stuff) and not try to industrialize "before they're ready" (the dirty little secret: by these standards, they'll never be "ready.")

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is a good history of how this school became THE school of American economics: she says Friedmanites tested it out on poor countries, found that it raised GDP (and ignored that it widened the rich-poor gap, increased the

[greekhoop]

See, I had heard all the names in your post before, but I had no idea what their ideas were. Shows you how clueless I am.

Thank you, that was really interesting.

[cat_eyed_fox]

While i have not read the Bible book you mentioned (The author's name is BORG?! Awesome.) I'm getting my Masters in Theology and Religion and I can see where he's coming form w/ the Paul stuff. One thing to remember is that there is Paul and Deutero-Paul, who were people/men writing as Paul after his death. The Deutero-Pauline stuff is where you find the no fun sexist noise, as well as the emphasis on a larger community of Christ Followers, instead of the little house temples popular during the century after Jesus' death. The authentic Paul letters mention women in leadership positions and one the of the most popular and entertaining tales of Paul involve a Roman woman named Thecla who's following was almost as popular as Paul's, if not more so. Which is not to say that Paul wasn't a big goober who didn't actually "Like Like" women, and who was probably suffering from some traumatic brain injury what with the being struck by lightning and changing his entire personality. I'm a little surprised that Borg-HA!- didn't mention the Deutero

[greekhoop]

To be fair, he did mention something about Paul's letters having more than one author, but since he didn't really go into it or explain it that well, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I am worried about how this will affect my plans for hot Paul/Augustine slash. (There are no plans for this, don't worry.)

Free Market Guy seems to be the sleeper hit of this LJ post. Everyone loves to hate him.

[cat_eyed_fox]

Time travel, baby, time travel makes all slash possible. :D
How could he not elaborate on that? it's like actually a useful, sensible reason for the inconsistent concepts found throughout the Letters.

Well it's easy to hate someone who thinks sweatshops aren't that bad. Like they don't chain kids to looms.

[polarisdib]

Free Market Guy is a contemporary dominant ideology with flaws that have real and observable negative effects in much more massive and recognizable scales than sentimental poetics about Noble Savages and semantic dissonance readings of The Bible (which, though also being a part of current Western hegemony, are gradually fading away in both effect and significance), at least today (historically, different story). He is easier to hate.

Problem is, economics ARE soulless and are supposed to be. The free market fixes nothing, people fix things. Capitalism is just a model for organizing trade. Because of Free Market Guy, capitalism's soullessness becomes damaging. On the flip side, because of Free Market Guy, people sometimes have a propensity to blame capitalism itself, instead of Free Market Guy. User-generated error, program is still workable.

--PolarisDiB

[cyranothe2nd]

For the record, I'm a fan of Borg and Spong and those Christians that refuse to be literalists but still hold onto some faith. Buuuuut...I feel that Borg especially puts up with a lot of unexamined cognitive dissonance in order to maintain his faith and it's annoying to see a smart man like him fall victim to such a venial sin.