Politics as a Peculiar Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy (New Thinking in Political Economy series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.90 (526 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1786430452 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-08-09 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Wagner, Holbert L. Richard E. Harris Professor of Economic, Department of Economics, George Mason University, US
Richard Wagner argues that this is the wrong approach and can ultimately be destructive to capitalism and to society. As Wagner points out in this lively book, the two processes are ''entangled,'' so analyses that separate politics and markets mislead. Politics in the US is a business, a peculiar business. But politics involves many people paying different costs to settle on one outcome, where markets involve many people responding in different ways to a single market price. The author explores how and why limited governments can morph into a system of destructive politics, and looks at ways to escape this process. This dynamic book will be useful for public choice scholars, economists, political scientists, and lawyers who are interested in political economy in its various guises.. Munger, Duke University, USEconomists typically treat government as something outside the business realm, a sort of 'Lord of the Manor'. Worse, politics have ensnared markets, as mechanisms created to protect economic liberty increasingly promote political control instead. They face the same problems as regular businesses, such as ascertaining demand and organizing production, and act within the system in a way that can lead to a parasitical relationship with the market. Largely rooted in political ec
Combining insights from Austrian economics, such as the impossibility of economic calculation in the absence of explicit price and profit signals, the methodological individualism of public choice scholars and an analytical approach that rejects partial equilibrium models in favor of ''systems thinking'' about markets and governments, Politics as a Peculiar Business ranges widely to ask and answer important questions about the foundations of a free society, including how to undo the "Faustian bargain" between citizens and an overweening state.' --William F. 'There is more to the theory of entangled political economy than just noting superficial similarities to, say, particle physics. Shughart II, Utah State University, US