Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

Economists think GDP is all that mattersNo design for lifeMuch of the criticism directed at economics stems from asense that it lacks a moral centre – that it does not tell ushow we should live. Robert A. Johnson, executive directorof the Institute for New Economic Thinking, has a pointwhen he accuses economists of being ‘devoid of answers’to such questions as ‘What is a meaningful life?’ and ‘Whatdo we aspire to?’ (Johnson 2012). The shortcomings of GDPas a measure of a nation can equally be applied to economicsgenerally. It is true that GDP cannot quantify ‘thoseunpriced but priceless services carried out by domesticworkers and by nature’ (Gleeson-White 2012). It is true, asRobert Kennedy said, that it ‘measures neither our wit norour courage’.But it is also true that the Richter scale measures neitherwit nor courage, and voltage does not tell us whatto aspire to, and yet seismology and physics somehowescape criticism for these shortcomings. Economists donot claim to have created a formula for the good life or tohave found a unifying theory of everything. The functionof many criticisms of economics is to caricature free marketeersas narrow-minded materialists whose bleak viewof humanity contrasts starkly with the thoughtful, holisticfolk who have been bestowed with the insight that there ismore to life than money. The challengers to the supposedconventional wisdom have a ‘philosophy’ while the economistshave only an ‘ideology’ (or perhaps a religion – thosewho believe in the free movement of goods and labour aresometimes termed ‘free-market fundamentalists’). In this45