As we move through the world, there come times when we can’t help but interact with other people or make decisions. When this happens, I would argue that we rely on two things (among others) to see us through the trying process: our assumptions and our values.
Most of us have values in common. Most of us value solidarity, at least in the sense that we are aware that every human on Earth is on Earth, together. Most of us value compassion, in the sense that we appreciate and recognize the suffering of others as something in ourselves, too. There are many other examples of shared values.
Another thing that informs our decisions and our interactions is our assumptions. We all have them, and we all carry them around with us, like hermit crabs carry their shells or slugs carry slime. These are imposed on us from the outside world.
Our values help shape our actions, but our assumptions set the parameters. They dictate what is and is not possible, offer us the menu of thought while necessarily making omissions. Economics, as a discipline, assumes the worst in each of us. It assumes we are motivated by self-interest. It puts a price tag on our ambitions. It auctions off what makes us human.
Economics has come to dominate the intellectual underpinnings of our society. We have internalized its assumptions as our own, and it has become a self-fulfilling discipline. Why can’t we all just get along? I submit that it is because economists tell us we can’t. Economists tell us we live in a world premised on scarcity and opportunism, and so we behave as if they were right.
I will use one example right now of something economists trumpet as a universal truth, a truth which inspires avarice and stinginess in all of us: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
When an economist tells you that there is no such thing as a free lunch, what they mean is that everything has costs associated with it. If you get free pizza at some promotional event for a student organization, an economist would remind you that the pizza wasn’t really free. Every crumb of it cost somebody something, from the energetic organization leader who filed the paperwork for a slice of (your) segregated fees to the dairyman who made the cheese. Your free pizza was budgeted, haggled over and accounted for.
But this thought paradigm does not hold equally true in all situations. Some meals, freely given and thankfully received, are free in a way much more fundamental than economics has language to describe. A potluck, where no one is turned away and where no one keeps score, where my friend brings his grandmother’s mac ‘n’ cheese recipe and your friend brings the craft beer, is one example. Economists might uncomfortably chalk this communal meal up as high in utility, its value not monetary but associated with satisfaction. My point isn’t that economists don’t attend potlucks, my point is that their scientific approach to potlucks is woefully inadequate.
Sharing is treated as something odd, something mysterious, something which threatens to undermine the basic assumptions of economics. At best, sharing is the exception to the carefully proven notion that people only really look out for themselves.
You know, that’s baloney. Whether or not you believe in altruism, you know that cooperation is as much a part of the human condition as conflict and competition. Economics treats cooperation as freakish, setting expectations only of ruthlessness and greed, to the detriment of us all.
No wonder we value goods as good. No wonder we treat those who advocate gift-based economies as wacko radicals. We have made the market paramount. We have put the burden of proof on our parks and libraries, rather than our much less meaningful financial institutions, to justify their existences. The profit motive, always the bottom line in questions of economics must not become our bottom lines too.
There are certainly good economists who do good work. Paul Krugman is an obvious example for many, but my roommate is an even more obvious example to those who know him. He is outstandingly intelligent and capable and he is truly interested in helping people. But his work is still premised on these notions of self-interest, of enforced scarcity, of greed, an outlook blind to intrinsic worth rather than a worth dictated by supply and demand.
Don’t be blinded. Dispel the assumption that there isn’t enough to go ‘round and embrace your impulse of trust and gratitude, your values of solidarity and compassion. Don’t do this in spite of economics, or as an exception to the rule of economics, but as an opportunity to step out of the shell you’ve accepted.
Noah Phillip is a sophomore double majoring in history of science and community and nonprofit leadership. Do you violently disagree with Noah’s opinion? Let us know by emailing us at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
