Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human

by Bart J. Wilson

Economics has a problem--the discipline cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. Economists deal with matters of fact, not with feelings and morals. They model representations of optimal agents, not flesh-and-blood human beings in ordinary life. By assuming that incentives and self-interest are sufficient to explain economic activity, economic science proceeds as if the human mind does not matter. But the origins of our actions--ideas--do indeed matter. They make us human.

In Meaningful Economics, Bart J. Wilson challenges economics to directly engage human beings as we really are, not as economists ideally assume. Wilson argues that economic science is as much about purposes and human values as it is about incentives. Moreover, he shows how the outcomes of our decisions (costs and benefits) and the origins of our decisions (motives and goals) can be understood in an integrated way.

Over the course of the book, Wilson develops a framework that connects the origins of human action to the outcomes of human action, explaining human conduct with causes and effects. He then shows how three basic principles of economics--trade, specialization, and property--require meaning, values, and purpose. With a fresh perspective and a novel theoretical framework that bridges economics and ethics, Meaningful Economics explains the roots of human conduct and its economic effects by grounding a science of economics in the moral sentiments that prompt human beings to act.

372 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 11, 2024

Reviews

[Eli Prager · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part of this book was discussing it socratically in our weekday reading groups. Will say that I disagree with this way of approaching economics— where do we draw the line between a meaningful economist and an anthropologist? What facts back up the claim that humans are the only species to understand property? My grey cat doesn’t let my orange cat eat out of his food bowl. At what point do we give economists the go ahead to make some generalizations about the reasoning behind peoples decisions? Don’t we have philosophers and historians for this very purpose?

Love the prose, written in a digestible way, with a humorous tone.

[Nikita Nikishin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the core idea, I do think we economists undervalue the role of human ideas and human preferences throughout many of our models. It’s what gives students like me a bad taste when taking introductory classes; some aspects of economics are fundamentally detached from human realities.

I view our discipline as a manifestation of the scientific method: we are actively struggling to create models that shape human decision making and resource allocation that can capture an endlessly complex nested doll of confounding variables. To do that we need a bigger picture, and to restructure our approach, but I disagree with the idea that this truth is exclusive to economics.

Well sourced and detailed arguments throughout the work, but do we go forward as an interdisciplinary science, blending in anthropology and psychology, or do we reject that and play god in an attempt to predict everything?

The former relies on patience and a lot of reading, and risks diluting our identity as an academic discipline. the latter is an impossible task.