Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Sahlin on the Milton Friedman Institute

The setting up of the Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago is opposed by Marshall Sahlins.

Brad DeLong gives his view of Sahlin here. A short quote
Sahlins's claims that it was "the market-industrial system [which] institutes scarcity"... seemed to indicate a total, willful, and culpable ignorance of practically all of the non-market settled agricultural societies of the past ten thousand years.
There is more on this issue from DeLong here.

1 comment:

Matt Nolan said...

What can I say - anthropologists, can't live with them, can't shoot them :)

I think a number of social scientists confuse the economic method and economists with the policies that were implemented by politicians or dictators on the basis of "economics". Just look at Naomi Klein.

I don't mean to sound so insulting about these other social sciences, but given that they constantly attack economics and economists without even a rudimentary knowledge of what economics is I feel that I'm allowed to give a little uneducated stick back ;)