Hard Times for Economists
I just read, for the first time, Charles Dickens's Hard Times. It is a wonderful example of the most common misunderstanding of economics. Dickens caricatures the economists who support free markets as one-dimensional imbeciles who believe that humans should strip themselves of all emotions and of all aesthetic sensibilities. The only things that truly matter to these "economists" are Facts and Reason - with Facts defined (apparently) exclusively as quantitative data, and Reason defined exclusively as thought processes devoted coldly to analyzing these Facts. A main character, Thomas Gradgrind, raised his children according to the "system" based on Facts alone. Here are the opening lines of the novel, delivered in a speech by Mr. Gradgrind to teachers at a school he supports:
Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle upon which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle upon which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!One of Mr. Gradgrind's younger children is named Adam Smith. The characters in this novel are indeed caricatures - the cruel, shallow, and stupid factory owner (Josiah Bounderby) who sees and values nothing except his own narrow material self-interest; Gradgrind, at first a friend of Bounderby, who is disillusioned from his obsession with Facts (and his friendship with Bounderby) only when his beloved daughter Louisa suffers a near-catastrophic mental breakdown because she was denied emotional and aesthetic outlets during her upbringing; Stephen Blackpool, a poor weaver in Bounderby's factory who is all-good, simple, and all-wise in his simplicity. The cartoonishness of these characters is laughable. But if you want to understand much of the hostility to market economics, and to the economics that endorses it, by all means read Hard Times. The presumptions and impressions that motivated this novel remain presumptions and impressions that motivate much of today's hostility to markets.
Posted at Don Boudreaux at 11:14 AM
