Re: rounding up posses

At 10:30 AM +0800 19/3/00, Boris Stremlin wrote:
>On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:
>
>> Personally I am in favor of focusing our disciplinary war
>> against (mainstream) economics.
>
>Fair enough, but let's not apply a double standard (one can just as
>easily
>claim that, like it or not, the principles of market economics are
>here to
>stay and use this argument as a defence of "mainstream" economics as you
>have used genetics in defence of sociobiology).

Sorry, I don't follow.

A claim that the principles of market economics are here to stay does
not necessarily amount to a defence of "mainstream" economics, if by
"mainstream" one means the neo-classical. There's that remarkable
book by Stiglitz "Whither Socialism?", derived from what must indeed
have been a remarkable lecture coming as it did in early 1990 shortly
after the fall of the Wall when capitalist and market triumphalism
was the rule. Stiglitz does indeed accept the principles of market
economics, but he performs quite an attack on "mainstream" economics
as an adequate description of the market.

Ditto, the fact of genetics, can hardly be taken as a defence of
sociobiology.

Khoo KJ