Economics
Economics and other disciplines
There is some degree of tension between economics and
ethics,
another of the most basic
social sciences, which tends to avoid quantification and emphasize
balances of
rights.
Modern economics deals with this tension explicitly – according to
some thinkers a theory of economics is also, or implies also, a theory
of
moral reasoning. One way economists deal with this is to qualify
discussions of
economic choice by noting that "all else being equal..." referring
to moral or social factors that are supposedly held equivalent for all
choices that one might make. For exploration of this issue, see
the
moral purchasing article.
Another premise is that economics fits within a finite ecosystem
where there are at least some abundant resources – for instance, when
fueling a fire one is usually concerned with finding the wood, and not
so much with finding the air to burn it with. Economics explicitly
does not deal with free abundant inputs – one criticism is that it
often conflicts with
ecology's
view of what affects what. Human beings are, according to ecologists,
merely one species participating in a vast
energy system on this planet – economy is a subset of ecology that
deals with just one species' habits and wants. See
nature's services for the economic view of ecology and
green economics for the view wherein economics is a subset of
ecology.
A third premise is that economics suggests
market forms and other means of distribution of scarce goods that
do not just affect "desires and wants" but also "needs" and "habits".
Much of so-called economic "choice" is involuntary, certainly given
the
conditioning that people have to expect certain
quality of life. This leads to one of the most hotly debated areas
in economic policy: namely the effect and efficacy of welfare
policies. This is viewed as a failure to respect economics reasoning
by
libertarians, who argue that redistribution of wealth is morally
and economically wrong. And viewed as a failure of economics to
respect society by
socialists, who argue that disparities of wealth should not have
been allowed in the first place. This led to both
19th century
labour economics and
20th century
welfare economics before being subsumed into
human development theory.
The debates above are all quite old. The term economics was coined
in around 1870, and popularised by influential "neoclassical"
economists such as
Alfred Marshall. Prior to this the subject had been known as
political economy and referred to "the economy of
polities" – competing
states.
The older term is still often used instead of
economics, especially by radical economists such as
Marxists who strongly question assumptions of "mainstream"
technical and quantitative economics. Use of this term often signals
an a basic disagreement with the terminology or paradigm of market
economics. Political economy explicitly brings political
considerations into economic analysis and therefore tends to be more
normative. Some mainstream universities (such as the
University of Toronto and many in the
United Kingdom) have a political economy department rather than an
economics department.
