News
- 08.11.2011
Out of the cage of loneliness, for an economy of happiness
It happens that the ambition to be a wise choice since betrayed the title. This was the case last jobLuciano Canova, a professor of Economics and Experimental Economics at the "Scuola Mattei," which, in his last
reflection on the economy, environment and happiness, borrowed an aphorism of Franz Kafka. In "A cage
went looking for a bird "(" Books Scheiwiller, 24 ORE Group), in fact, the environmental issue is
framed investigating "a bird's eye" centuries of philosophy and history of economic thought. It brings
parallel bold, like the one that combines the Robert Solow neoclassical orthodoxy that tells the Callimachus
Erisittone eternal hunger. Embedded in general equilibrium theory as un'archetipica
laboratory rat, the homo economicus lives in the grip of a perpetual hunger, consuming goods up to
devouring itself.
Happiness, then, is to maximize the fight. From optimizing animal, man consumes, and replaces
combines, in a process that replicates itself indefinitely, approaching the perfect balance that brings the idea of
all. The environmental issue is no exception: technical capital and natural capital are
exactly replaceable and last forever. The idea of the perfect market anesthetized network connections
emotional binds man to his fellows and to the surrounding environment. It is the posthumous victory of Plato
Aristotle: Man is an animal apparently non-relational, that is close to the absolute price
emancipate itself from the bond interaction. Only in the pure simplicity dell'Iperuranio every idea is crystallized and
more complete happiness. Ceteris paribus, Plato points to the sky just like the neoclassical economist
equilibrium point.
But following this approach means, in the words of Kafka, quoted in the title, imagine that a cage
can start looking for a bird. The risk is too narrow mesh cage between the
neoclassical production function that is free (and perhaps not catchable) by definition: the nature.
The man, in fact, is a social animal. Happiness can not be measured, but the propensity to build
relationships with others or disclose discrete approximation. Investigated and that goes back to
complexity it deserves.
Happiness feeds on reports that, as such, are not outside the realm imaginable. It is the nature
reciprocity that make it possible to free the man from isolation. This is not the happiness of Bentham,
declined in value, size becomes objective and measurable, but Aristotle's eudaimonia, which draws strength from
virtue. Without an ethical management of environmental assets, therefore, there can be no happiness.
Canova's essay is more than just a critical economic orthodoxy. In claim
centrality of reflection on happiness in the scientific debate, the author mixes the languages and with levity and
irony, the provocation moves even on a formal level. And so the disclosure is more canonical
broken by humorous stories, true "interludes" literary paradoxes questioning the reader with the
surreal flavor. The alternatives to the utilitarian paradigm, and Pareto, for example, are anticipated by
story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, rewritten for the occasion in nine variations on the theme and to illustrate the limits
amount of reductionism is called into question the Professor Diogenes Paradox, by a phantom
Intergalactic Congress of Archaeological Studies of the year 3811, reflects on what little they eventually
survivor of many theoretical abstractions of the day.
The invitation, in the variety of tones, is to overcome the neoclassical approach, in the light of a perspective
new, for example, open to contamination with the neurosciences and the scope of the innovative concept of
relational goods. What is needed is a return to reason "in terms of us." Each report makes us human
dependent on each other. As opposed to life free from the constraint of emotions that, according
Plato, come close to the absolute, we must recall the lessons of Aristotle and the concreteness of reality
made up of many imperfections.
The truth - and we are strong claim to the work of Canova - is that happiness is achieved in a context of
relationship in which humans interact with each other and with the environment, and it is this complexity that economic theory
must have the ambition to grasp. The man who hopes up to represent himself completely ab solutus
from all bonds - with the environment, with the past, with the other - and freely, but only to be alone.
Luciano Canova - A cage went in search of a bird - The environment and its value - Books Scheiwiller,
Sole24Ore Group.