Normative Foundations of Scarcity

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:23 PM, <pae_news@btinternet.com> wrote:

Dear Asad Zaman,

I am much impressed by the quality of your paper “The Normative Foundations of Scarcity” and by its relevance to the present historical situation. It will appear in the next issue (September) of the RWER.

Thank you again for submitting this paper to the RWER. It will be much appreciated by the readership and could become a major reference point for future works.

Edward

Edward Fullbrook

editor

Paper Title:

Normative Foundations of Scarcity: Scarcity13toRWE.doc

Abstract:

The elevation of scarcity to the fundamental economic problem rests on some unstated normative assumptions. These include a political commitment to private property, a methodological commitment to not inquire about taste formation, and the idea that human welfare is roughly equivalent to preference satisfaction

Submit to:??

Dennis Snower <editorial-office@economics-ejournal.org>

Older Versions; with more Islamic Content, and related readings:.[link]

Rejected by Econ & Philosphy Journal -- too spread out, narrow focus, their letter is attached in comments below;

Duncan Foley's comment and related paper: [link]

Table of Contents

The Normative Foundations of Scarcity 1

1. Introduction 2

2. Logical Positivism and the Elimination of Values 3

2.1 Positivist Objections to Values 4

2.2 Current Philosophy of Science 5

3. The Three Pillars of Scarcity 6

3.1 Locke’s Theories of Property 7

3.2 De Gustibus non est Disputandum. 8

3.3 Welfare is Preference Satisfaction. 10

4. Alternatives to Scarcity 11

4.1 Alternatives to private property 11

4.2 Studying the Formation of Tastes 12

4.3 Direct Measures of Welfare. 13

5. Entanglement of Facts and Values 14

5.1 The “Copernican Revolution” of Kant 15

5.2 The Duhem-Quine Thesis 16

6. Conclusions 17

7. References 18

References:

Agassi, Joseph, 2009, “Current Philosophy of Science,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences Vol 20 No. 10, p 1–17.

Ariely, Dan, 2008, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Harper Collins, NY.

Ayer. A. J. (1936, 1971), Language, Truth and Logic. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books.

Binmore, Kenneth (2009) Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility.

Caplin, Andrew and Schotter, Andrew (2008) eds. The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics: A Handbook, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Cohen, Paul (1967) Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, Addison-Wesley, MA.

Cooter, R. and Rappoport, P “Were the Ordinalists Wrong About Welfare Economics?” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), pp. 507-530

Dragun, A. K. (1987), “Property Rights in Economic Theory,” Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 859-868.

Ferguson, T. S. (1967) Mathematical Statistics: A Decision Theoretic Approach, Academic Press, New York.

Fukuyama, Francis (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish Hamilton.

Gardner, Sebastian (1999) Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, Routledge, London.

D. W. Hands (2009),"The Positive Normative Distinction and Economics," Philosophy of Economics, Uskali Mäki (ed.), Vol. 13 of D. Gabbay, P. Thagard and J. Woods (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science.

Hausman, Daniel and Michael McPherson, (1994) “Preference, Belief, and Welfare” The American Economic Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, pp. 396-400

Hausman, D. M. and McPherson, M. S. (2006), Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Houthakker, H.S. (1950) ‘Revealed Preference and the Utility Function’, Economica, vol. 17, pp. 159–74.

Kogl, Alexandra (2005) "Enclosure and Exclusion: The Invention of Private Property" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, Apr 07, 2005 Online <PDF>. 2010-01-21 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p85670_index.html>

Kuhn, T. S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lerner, Abba P. “The Economics and Politics of Consumer Sovereignty,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2 (Mar. 1, 1972), pp. 258-266

Locke, John (1690) Second Treatise on Civil Government. London.

B. Magee (1971), Modern British Philosophy. London: Secker and Warburg

Michell, Joel (2003), “The Quantitative Imperative, Positivism, Naïve Realism and the Place of Qualitative Methods in Psychology,” Theory and Psychology Vol 13(1), 5-31

Philippe Mongin, (2006), “Value Judgments and Value Neutrality in Economics,” Economica 73, 257–286

Perloff, Jeffrey M. (2008) Microeconomics, 5th Edition, Addison-Wesley, New York.

Polanyi, Karl (1944) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Putnam, Hilary, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Distinction and Other Essays. 2002

Quine, W. V. ([1951] 1953) “Two dogmas of empiricism”, in: W. V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, pp. 20–46 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press).

Raiklin, Ernest and Bulent Uyar, “On the relativity of the concepts of needs, wants, scarcity and opportunity cost”, International Journal of Social Economics, Year: 1996 Volume: 23 Issue: 7 Page: 49 – 56

Rashid, Salim (2009), “Underdetermination, Multiplicity, and Mathematical Logic,” draft, available from http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00004905/

Ritchie, J. and Jane Lewis, 2003, editors, Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers, Sage Publications, Los Angeles.

Robbins, Lionel. An essay on the nature and significance of economic science. London: Macmillan, 1932

Reuben, Julie A., (1996) The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, University of Chicago Press.

Sait, Siraj and Hilary Lim, (2006) Land, Law and Islam: Property and Human Rights in the Muslim World, London: Zed.

Samuelson, Paul A. and William Nordhaus, (1989) Economics, 13th Edition.

Sen, Amartya (1983) Poverty and Famine: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford University Press, UK.

Sen, Amartya (1987) On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987

Sen, Amartya (1999) “The Possibility of Social Choice,” American Economic Review, Vol 89, No. 3, p 349-378

Stigler, George J. And Gary S. Becker, (1977) “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 76-90

Suppe, F. (1977), The Structure of Scientific Theories (2nd ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

R. H. Tawney (1926) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc..

Van Fraassen, Bastiaan C. (1980) The Scientific Image , New York: Oxford University Press

Weston, S. C. (1994), “Toward a Better Understanding of the Positive/Normative Distinction in Economics,” Economics And Philosophy, Volume 10; No. 1

Wong, Stanley (2009) Foundations of Paul Samuelson's Revealed Preference Theory: A study by the method of rational reconstruction, 2nd Edition, Routledge, NY.