A Positive Step In The Right Direction

by tristero

Since I so often criticize my fellow liberals for their rotten rhetorical habits, it is only fair to acknowledge examples of compelling contributions to a new liberal discourse. And, man, they’re on to something really good here. Liu and Hanauer’s notion is that our prevailing mechanistic metaphors for describing the economy are inaccurate and constrain our choices in unhelpful ways. The economy more resembles a garden than a machine, and it needs to be cultivated more than it needs to be oiled. I think they’re absolutely right. And they quite obviously intend you to swap out “economy”for “government”or “society;” the metaphor stands.

To quibble a bit, I’m not fond of their specific neologisms – Machinebrain and Gardenbrain – both of them ugly constructions that sound to my ear like mechanistic or pseudo-computer jargon, symptomatic of precisely the attitude the authors deplore. Still, I don’t have any fancy alternatives to offer; I simply like the idea of characterizing the economy as more a kind of an eco-system than a machine – and leaving it at that.

Regardless, this new metaphor is very promising. It provides a  liberal-leaning alternative model for economic reality that happens to fit the facts far better than the right-wing/libertarian machine models which have led so often to major catastrophe.

UPDATE: Douglas Smith of Econ4 added some astute observations in a personal email:

Gardenbrain is well done/very astute! But, their thinking needs just a bit of weeding in this regard. Note this paragraph:

“Or take taxes. Under the efficient-market hypothesis, taxes are an extraction of resources from the jobs machine, or more literally, taking money out of the economy. It is not just separate from economic activity, but hostile to it. This is why most Americans believe that lower taxes will automatically lead to more prosperity. Yet if there were a shred of truth to this, then given our historically low tax rates we would today be drowning in jobs and general prosperity.”

 This is not why most Americans believe what they do about lower taxes. Most Americans believe what they do about lower taxes because most Americans see taxes as their own money and they don’t want to lose that money.

Moreover, at least below the top 1% … perhaps 5% or so …. lower taxes is actually a good way to provide nutrients to the garden because most Americans today would need to spend that money (good for a consumer driven economy); or, use the money to pay off debts (also good).

Having said this, they are basically entirely correct about Gardenbrain being far superior in health/well being/sustainability of economy than Machinebrain.