“And it wasn’t until much later that when I had read more carefully and maybe had some people kind of point me in certain directions or whatever, that I came to realize that what Buchanan is struggling against is fundamentally important to how we think about economics. And he points to the fact that there are two ways of doing it, as he puts it, two methodologically distinct ways of doing economics. And he says in the first one, the economist sets up a goal for the economy and for the actors within the economy.”
“And that goal, he points to efficiency as one possible goal that could be presupposed. And here’s what’s important, is you then impose that on the model, I mean, it’s part of the model, and it’s imposed on the people who are in the model. And that, he says, in the 1960s, is very different from what he’s trying to do, which is a much messier kind of economics.”
“And maybe that’s why it’s, A, both difficult to do, and B, perhaps not as appealing to some economists, which is you don’t establish the goal, rapid growth, or, as I said earlier, efficiency, but instead, you let the people within the economy, private individuals, engage, as he puts it, in the continuing search for institutional arrangements upon which they can reach substantial consensus or agreement. So that’s a very different way of doing economics. And really, the book is about how the Virginia School, led by Buchanan in this respect, tried to have this second way of doing economics as an alternative, a methodological alternative.”
From The Great Antidote: Sandra Peart on Ethical Quandaries and Politics Without Romance, Jun 28, 2004
Lots of great stuff in this podcast with Juliet Sellgren.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-antidote/id1530247318?i=1000660538062
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