Greed, Self-Interest and the Shaping of Economics PDF Download

Author: Rudi Verburg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351977792
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Since 2008, profound questions have been asked about the driving forces and self-regulating potential of the economic system, political control and morality. With opinion turning against markets and self-interest, economists found themselves on the wrong side of the argument. This book explores how the past of economics can contribute to today’s debates. The book considers how economics took shape as philosophers probed into the viability of commercial society and its potential to generate positive-sum outcomes. It explains how dreams of affluence, morality and happiness were built upon human greed and vanity. It covers the bumpy road of the construction and reconstruction of this dream, exploring the debate on the foundations, conditions and limitations of the idea of the social utility of greed and vanity. Revisiting this debate provides a rich source of ideas in rethinking economics and the basic beliefs concerning our economic system today.

Author: Rudi Verburg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781351977784
Category : Avarice
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"Since 2008, profound questions have been asked about the driving forces and self-regulating potential of the economic system, political control and morality. With opinion turning against markets and self-interest, economists found themselves on the wrong side of the argument. This book explores how the economics of the past can contribute to todays debates.The book considers how political economy developed, as philosophers probed into the viability of commercial society and its potential to generate positive-sum outcomes. It explores how dreams of affluence, morality and happiness were built upon human greed and vanity. It presents a framework within which to contextualise present-day concerns about limits to growth, and through which we can rethink the basis of our economic system."--Provided by publisher.

Author: Michael S. Pritchard
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030700879
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This collection examines how greed should be understood and appraised. Roundly condemned by virtually all religions, greed receives mixed appraisals in the domains of business and economics. The volume examines these mixed appraisals and how they fare in light of their implications for greed in our everyday world. Greed in children is uniformly criticized by parents, other adults, and even children’s peers. However, in adulthood, greed is commended by some as essential to profit-seeking in business and for offering the greatest promise in promoting economic prosperity for everyone. Those who advocate a more permissive position on greed in the adult world typically concede that some constraints on greed are needed. However, the supporting literature offers little analysis of what greed is (as distinct from, for example, the effort to meet modest needs, or the pursuit of ordinary self-interested ends). It offers little clarification of what sorts of constraints on greed are needed. Nor is careful attention given to difficulties children might have in making a transition without moral loss from regarding greed as inappropriate to its later qualified acceptance. Through a secular approach, this book attempts to make significant inroads in remedying these shortcomings.

Author: Julian Edney
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595360009
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
This is an immensely wealthy society but it is not a humane society. Greed has become a force creating precipitous inequalities, and divisions in this society now approach a kind of wealth apartheid, but greed is rarely seen as a moral wrong. This is not the first time the nation has produced huge economic inequalities. Today, as the free market continues its global advance, the values of democracy are being torn. Two ideologies popular in the era of robber barons appear to be rising again: laissez-faire and Social Darwinism. Freedom, coercion, debt, credit cards, meritocracy, sociopaths, environment and corporations are all examined. Is exploitation wrong? The free market conceals a cultural contradiction: the everyday workplace vs. democracy. How can we hope to export democracy if we don't have it? Our economic theory is antiquated and we need to step a little closer to modern reality. What motivates people in today's society: is it the pursuit of happiness, or is it surviving in an endless round of work-and-debt? Or is it the avoidance of fear? Remedies and how you can make a difference.

Author: Christopher Snowdon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This IEA publication deals head-on with a number of widely quoted myths about the market economy. In the case of the philosophical myths, such as the idea that economists believe that everybody is greedy, the author, Christopher Snowdon, carefully and entertainingly unpicks the misguided ideas that have taken hold. The author then moves on and effectively disposes of a number of economic myths using empirical evidence that is often ignored by commentators. This book is essential reading for all who wish to separate fact from fiction when it comes to understanding economic reasoning and evidence.

Author: Paul Frijters
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107355168
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
Why are people loyal? How do groups form and how do they create incentives for their members to abide by group norms? Until now, economics has only been able to partially answer these questions. In this groundbreaking work, Paul Frijters presents a new unified theory of human behaviour. To do so, he incorporates comprehensive yet tractable definitions of love and power, and the dynamics of groups and networks, into the traditional mainstream economic view. The result is an enhanced view of human societies that nevertheless retains the pursuit of self-interest at its core. This book provides a digestible but comprehensive theory of our socioeconomic system, which condenses its immense complexity into simplified representations. The result both illuminates humanity's history and suggests ways forward for policies today, in areas as diverse as poverty reduction and tax compliance.

Author: A. Brassey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023024615X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
For all of the technical explanations for meltdown in the financial markets during the banking crisis, the most readily accepted and almost universal explanation is the single word 'greed'. This is a subject which can at once be seen as the disease at the heart of society and the motivating force behind the progress of mankind.

Author: Gary D. Lynne
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030506010
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This book presents the Metaeconomics Framework and Dual Interest Theory, which weave the empathy-based moral and ethical dimension back into key economic questions. Metaeconomics addresses the problem of placing too much emphasis on the market or the government, and thus argues that seeing the link between ego and empathy, self- and other-interest, and market and government will lead to a more just, fair, and sustainable polity. The unique Dual Interest Theory proposes that ego-based self-interest and empathy-based other-interest are joint and internal to each person: it maintains the original proposition from Adam Smith that each person maximizes their own-interest, which Metaeconomics makes clear involves balancing the two joint interests, although self-interest is more primal. The book begins with an explanation of how Metaeconomics connects the other kinds of economics. The book then provides a series of applications of Metaeconomics in heated policy issues, such as elections, finance, family, food, health, natural resources, education, taxes, and extreme inequality, among others. Finally, the book concludes that the only way to save capitalism is to bring empathy into both private and public actions and bring about a more humane balance in market and government.

Author: Joost Hengstmengel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429511116
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In this important volume, Joost Hengstmengel examines the doctrine of divine providence and how it served as explanation and justification in economic debates in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries throughout Western Europe. The author discusses five different areas in which God was associated with the economy: international trade, division of labour, value and price, self-interest, and poverty and inequality. Ultimately, it is shown that theological ideas continued to influence economic thought beyond the Medieval period, and that the science of economics as we know it today has theological origins. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, the history of theology, philosophy and intellectual history.

Author: Susumu Egashira
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811593957
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This is the first book to describe the entire developmental history of the human aspects of economics. The issue of “self-interest” is discussed throughout, from pre-Adam Smith to contemporary neuroeconomics, representing a unique contribution to economics. Though the notion of self-interest has been interpreted in several ways by various schools of economics and economists since Smith first placed it at the heart of the field, this is the first book to focus on this important but overlooked topic. Traditionally, economic theory has presupposed that the core of human behavior is self-interest. Nevertheless, some economists, e.g. recent behavioral economists, have cast doubt on this “self-interested” explanation. Further, though many economists have agreed on the central role of self-interest in economic behavior, each economist’s positioning of self-interest in economic theory differs to some degree. This book helps to elucidate the position of self-interest in economic theory. Given its focus, it is a must-read companion, not only on the history of economic thought but also on economic theory. Furthermore, as today’s capitalism is increasingly causing people to wonder just where self-interest lies, it also appeals to general readers.