The post-autistic movement now has a blog: The Real-World Economics Review Blog.
I'm much less enthusiastic about the Counter-Economics Blog, which I stumbled over recently. Shaun Snapp claims to be applying critical thinking to economics, but he is too popular and too focused on finance for my taste. His claim that nobody reads either Adam Smith or Karl Marx is belied by the many serious scholars that do. (I've read major works by both.)
Hey there Robert,
ReplyDeleteThis is Shaun Snapp. Now you have every right to say that my blog is not to your taste, or bad or whatever stikes you. However, I needed to clairfy what I meant by "nobody reads Marx, or Smith."
While there are some serious academics who read them both, the vast majority of people who quote either of them, have never read them. Also, I am not the only person to notice this....Chomsky has stated about Adam Smith that "he is to be worshipped, but never read." Both Marx and Smith are beyond the capabilities of MBAs to read, yet MBAs quote Smith as good and Marx as bad without having read them. That is really what I meant when I say that nobody reads them. I suppose I could have said 99% of people who quote them do not read them, but I make this explicit in the articles that bear there names.
My post on Marx discusses that Marx may be unknowable. I have discussed Marx at length and those that follow Marx seem to disagree mightily about what Marx meant. I find Marx work scattershot and incomplete which is why I compare it strongly to the Bible -- it can mean anything and be cherry picked by anyone. Smith is much more coherent, but he is would not support 90% of the policies and ideas that have been ascribed too him. He was no amoral Wall Street type who thought that it was all about money. He described morality along with economy in his book "A Theory of Moral Sentiments."