Barely 20 minutes ago, Troy Davis was executed in the state of Georgia.
Earlier this afternoon, Mike Konczal posted a rather thought-provoking pair of images that attempted to visually represent different interpretations of what is wrong with the economy as well as their accordant solutions. It’s really quite an interesting way of looking at what’s being talked about.
Except…one thing that is conspicuously absent is a circle representing those who think nothing at all is wrong with the economy and that, more importantly, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. After all, the notion that a crisis is actually just a natural function of capitalism in which, as Andrew Mellon reportedly claimed, assets are returned to their rightful owner is not at all a new thing, nor that much of a minority opinion. That means there’s also another rather important circle missing, which is those who believe that this is not an aberration at all, but rather that what is wrong is the whole structure of capitalism itself.
These are pretty serious omissions, but not that surprising. While I’m no economist and I’m barely a casual observer of the debates economists and public policy wonks interested in the economy engage in, what is fascinating is this overwhelming belief in the “scientific-ness” of the economy. That is, it’s really just math and math-like stuff at the end of the day that drives the economy, and the real question revolves around which ways to conduct the proper mathematical dissection of it. Except…if you pay really close attention, you’ll realize how ridiculous this is.
For example, here’s Paul Krugman in an essay linked from Konczal’s piece. As he writes:
That’s about what I was thinking in, say, January 2009. With the severe financial crisis still relatively recent, and many people still expecting a V-shaped recovery, it didn’t seem possible to persuade the Fed to commit to a permanent rise in the monetary base or a rise in the medium-run inflation target, nor did it seem possible to convince markets that there had been a long-run change in policy. The chances for persuading Congress to agree to a large temporary fiscal stimulus seemed much better.
But as it turned out, that didn’t happen either; we got an inadequate stimulus, and the failure of that stimulus to do more was then taken as proof that Keynesian policies don’t work – in part because the Obama administration insisted and continues to insist that the size of that stimulus was just right.
So what was the right answer? I guess I’d say that if powerful political forces block any effective response to a crisis, there is no effective response to that crisis.
The phrase “the chances for persuading Congress to agree to a large temporary fiscal stimulus seemed much better” is honest but also brutally telling. What this reminds us is that, as far as the nuts and bolts of the economy go, this is all still precariously predicated on nothing more than social arrangements. If it were purely mathematical, the outcomes of elections, the personalities of leaders, the ability for a legislative body to be persuaded shouldn’t matter. And yet, they do matter and matter a great deal.
The fact that we can influence these things means that economics is cultural, not scientific or mathematical. God did not write Wealth of Nations, nor The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It is far to easy to get caught up in quasi-scientific analyses of economics and to forget that at the root of everything is human intellect, nothing else.
This, though, is beyond the scope of the discipline of economics. They can measure various things, but try as they might they cannot account for things like, for example, the clash of personalities within the executive branch. So in trying to figure out what is “wrong” with the economy, we have to at some point realize that we’re no longer asking a question concerning a rule governed system, but rather we are asking a question of culture. Ultimately, what is “wrong” with the economy depends on the culture that the economy is an expression of. Is our current problem a problem with weak demand, or is it a problem of our political system that allows inordinate amounts of control to be exerted by those who actually benefit from a crisis? Are we seeing a need for more quantitative easing, or is this a sign that we have so dramatically narrowed our educational system that members of our society can no longer envision exactly what a systematic critique of the structures of society might look like? Remember, at its very root, capitalism is a collective enterprise predicated upon individuals accepting its basic premises. At the very least, for example, we all have to assent to the idea of private property. If enough people cannot be persuaded of the virtues of private property (or cannot be forced through violence), capitalism simply ceases to function.
So the death of Troy Davis is not so far removed from this, as it was not “justice” that executed him, but human beings who have and have always had the power to stop this. They did not. His death is saddening, but should not be surprising. An awful lot of Americans believe in the death penalty, even when confronted with evidence that innocent people have and will continue to be wrongly put to death. We assent to this, just as we assent to the ways the economy currently works. This is our America in all its brutality and ugliness. What more can be said?
