From Old Economics to New Economics- Radical ... - Bruce Nixon

have highlighted the ‘care’ aspects of the core economy, and others such as Edgar Cahn have
broadened the concept considerably:
Who teaches children to walk To talk To obey the rules To tell the truth To avoid harming
themselves To avoid harming others Who produces a workforce that gets up in the morning, gets
places on time, and knows it is wrong to steal and lie Mothers, fathers, grandparents, families and
those institutions that impart moral values. 29
Furthermore, the quantity and nature of motivators of behaviour derived from moral values –
relative to that of self-interest – can strongly influence the form of society and economy that
we have, particularly with regard to cooperation vs. competition:
The relationship between social bonds and competition is curvilinear; weak bonds are one factor that
allows all out social conflict; tight bonds will restrain, if not suppress, competition. 30
Thus an economic system that favours cooperation over competition in many instances
requires relatively tight social bonds, or shared values or morals in order to function.
Moreover, it is important that the formation of these is separated from the economic sphere: if
this is not the case, then commercial imperatives come to dominate and themselves shape
people’s sense of their ‘moral commitments’. That is, a pure focus on people’s response to
financial incentives may, over time, fatally undermine the countervailing principles of
morality.
‘Doing the right thing’ and ‘looking out for yourself’ become one and the same thing:
Neoclassicals tend to design institutions for knaves, either assuming that all people are knaves or that
those who wish to be “good” will do so anyhow, but the others need to be paid or punished…such
policies undercut the “good” or normative, voluntary behaviour. Thus, if volunteers read to blind
patients in an institution, but its administrators, anxious to secure a more reliable service, will pay for
some such reading, one would expect that under such circumstances volunteer reading will cease,
exacting a sizeable cost for what increase in reliability is attained. 31
For socio-economists, this leads to specific policy proposals:
The policy point is that one needs to work not merely on the cost-benefit, deterrence, incentive and
police side, but also on the formation of preferences side, via moral education, peer culture, community
values and the mobilisation of appropriate public opinion. Factors that neoclassicists tend to ignore,
because they take preferences for granted. 32
If then we are all ‘conflicted’, all have the potential to be Dr Jekyll as well as Mr Hyde, the
task is to encourage behaviour that is good for society and discourage that which is not.
Ruskin, Schumacher and the ecological economists have taught us to value that which
enhances the well-being of individuals and communities, and is in harmony with the natural
world and environmental sustainability. Institutional economists demonstrate that people’s
‘preferences’ – their ‘wants, desires and values’ – are not fixed, but are shaped by the
institutional framework in which we live. Thus in a world where the pursuit of ever-higher
levels of income dominates, and capitalism must create and recreate ‘demand’, commercial
values come to both constrain the choices that people see as feasible and to incentivise them
within these narrow parameters. We are, to a considerable extent, thus ‘conditioned’ to act in
29 Cahn (2001)
30 Etzioni (1988)
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
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