When a biologist encounters in a living organism a physical or behavioral trait that is unusual or unfamiliar, and that does not contribute to survival in any way that is immediately obvious, the biologist’s professional instinct is to think hard about that trait in order to identify its likely genetic benefit to its possessor. The biologist, upon encountering such a trait, does not leap to the conclusion that he or she has encountered an instance of “nature failure.” The biologist, of course, recognizes that nature and natural selection are never perfect; sometimes living creatures are indeed saddled with traits that do indeed reduce their genes’ chances of survival. But this possibility of “nature failure” is not the competent biologist’s first go-to explanation whenever he or she cannot grasp the reason why natural selection might have created in the organism this unusual or unfamiliar trait.
In his new book, Foolproof, Greg Ip suggests that there are two types of economists: ecologists; and engineers.
An engineer thinks about how to design a machine. An ecologist thinks about how to understand and protect an evolving system.
In The Book of Arnold, I suggest that after the Second World War, the MIT economics department, fed by funding from the Department of Defense, promoted the engineering mindset. This mindset then took over the ecosystem of academic economics, which those of us with the ecological mindset struggle against.
I think that the “engineering mindset” goes back much further. It sure seems like Pigou had a lot of it, and so did the classical English economists.
The idea that one can and ought to rationally and ‘scientifically’ reconstruct society like an engineer, set it up on a new foundation, and dispense with obsolete and unjust traditions, institutions, and superstitions goes back pretty far, depending on where you draw certain lines.
The pre-1848 Socialists were quite vigorously insistent on their duty – and naively hubristic in their capacity – to do so. As were the progressives in the early 20th century.
But plenty of amusing, mid 19th century examples can be found in Robert Owen’s Letters to the Human Race.
I think Boudreaux’s criticism of ‘market failure’ by comparing it to ‘nature failure’, is basically a resurrection of Chesterton’s criticism of the accusations of ‘social institution failure’ of his time. I.e. “A lack of understanding of the purpose of an old fence is not an immediate license to conclude its worthlessness, condemn it, and then tear it down.” Ignorance guarantees unintended consequences.
“The idea that one can and ought to rationally and ‘scientifically’ reconstruct society like an engineer, set it up on a new foundation, and dispense with obsolete and unjust traditions, institutions, and superstitions goes back pretty far, depending on where you draw certain lines.”
This idea is by no means found exclusively on the Left. It seems to underlie libertarianism as well. And, on some issues, even the mainstream free-market right.
“This idea is by no means found exclusively on the Left. It seems to underlie libertarianism as well. And, on some issues, even the mainstream free-market right.”
Maybe. But I’ll take the flu over E-Bola any day.
It is a mistake to see these in opposition though. Most variation/production occurs within organisms/organizations where engineering dominates, while most selection/motivation occurs between them where ecology dominates. Multicellular organisms solved an incredibly difficult engineering problem of market specialization internalization allowing far more advanced diverse ecological competition.
I agree. The implication is that measurement within organizations (e.g. efficiency, productivity) but estimating relationships between organizations should inspire a lot of humility.
To me, what you are saying is that highly successful, award-winning, high-earning, tenured for life and profession driving economists are like BAD engineers. Engineers can deal with falsification by the afternoon when whatever reductive mechanism they were working on that morning doesn’t work. This is often literal. No engineer would get a software widget to work and then claim that it implies conclusions about the rest of the software let alone the entire economy.
But to work with the analogy, I would suppose that the engineers’ economists complaint about the ecologist economists would be that they never ship.
I think some of the problem must lie with the marketing department.
This is why I would guess that a Toyota Lexus is better than the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle.is engineered, the Toyota Lexus is engineered in an evolutionary process with feed back from the how things have performed on the road.
This is why I am fairly conservative in my Libertarianism.