Economics Quotes - Page 19

• Now we see evolutionary trends in a variety of areas ranging from atomic and molecular physics through fluid mechanics, chemistry and biology to large scale systems of relevance in environmental and economic sciences

  Ilya Prigogine

  Environmental, Trends, Chemistry

  Ilya Prigogine (2003). “Is Future Given?”, p.22, World Scientific

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• Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Brain, Evolution

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• Our aim must be to make our successive mistakes as quickly as possible. To speed up evolution.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Evolution, Speed

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• Economists have the correct insight that economics is a theory of choice, the key to the story is the variety of options and centralised political control limits the options. The best recipe is adaptive efficiency coping with novel uncertainty in a non-ergodic world, the maintenance of institutions which enable trial & error experiment to occur, and an effective means of eliminating unsuccessful solutions

  Douglass North

  Mean, Errors, Keys

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• It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.

  Charles Darwin

  Variation, Destroyed

  "Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution".

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• What really happens is that the gene pool becomes filled with genes that influence bodies in such a way that they behave 'as if' they made complex, if unconscious, cost/benefit calculations

  Richard Dawkins

  Cost, Benefits, Body

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• The perennial gale of creative destruction

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Creative, Gale, Destruction

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2011). “The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle”, p.37, Transaction Publishers

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• It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Different Opinions, Imperfect

  "On Liberty: Mill's Works".

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• Conformity can be costly in a world of uncertainty which requires innovative institutional creation because no one can know the right path to survival. Over time, the richer the cultural context in terms of providing multiple experimentation and creative competition, the more likely the successful survival of the society

  Douglass North

  Successful, Creative, Competition

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• A diversity of approaches is necessary if there is to be a good chance of hitting on one that works. Progress is a social undertaking & achievement, because people see things differently

  Richard Posner

  Diversity, People, Achievement

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• I am convinced that both markets and free trade are good, but the traditional answer that we give to students to explain why they are good, the one based on perfect competition and Pareto optimality, is becoming untenable. Something much more interesting and more complicated is going on here

  Paul Romer

  Perfect, Interesting, Giving

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• Some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world about them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce so their pattern of behaviour and thought will become dominant

  Stephen Hawking

  Patterns, Able, Behaviour

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• Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Self, Discovery, Competition

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• There was never anything so well devised by men which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted

  Thomas Cranmer

  Men, Wells, Continuance

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• The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ideas, Wish, Shapes

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• There can be no autonomous agent with unitary interests called 'society' that exerts causal influence. This is a logical impossibility

  David Buss

  Agents, Influence, Logical

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• There is no such thing as society, there is a living tapestry of men and women and the beauty of that tapestry, and the quality of our lives, will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and to turn round and help, by our own efforts, those who are unfortunate. There's no such thing as entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation

  Margaret Thatcher

  Responsibility, Men, Effort

  "Thatcher funeral address prompts Tory praise for bishop of London" by Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. April 17, 2013.

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• The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community

  Tony Blair

  Community, Problem, Individual

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• The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.

  Tony Blair

  Views, Class, Misunderstood

  Tony Blair (2004). “Tony Blair in His Own Words”, Politicos Pub

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• The vision of personalised public services - meeting the individual needs of all our citizens - requires continuing reform in the way services are delivered

  Gordon Brown

  Vision, Citizens, Way

  Gordon Brown (2006). “Speeches, 1997-2006”, Bloomsbury Pub Limited

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• The understanding which has driven New Labour's reform is to put the individual citizen - the patient, the parent, the pupil, the law abiding citizen - at the centre of each public service, with the service reformed to meet their individual requirements

  Tony Blair

  Law, Parent, Understanding

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• For Rousseau and Mandeville the absence of a moral instinct meant the laws of society had no moral validity, they were nothing but the inventions of the cunning and the powerful, in order to maintain or to acquire an unnatural and unjust superiority over the rest of their fellow creatures.

  Gertrude Himmelfarb

  Powerful, Order, Law

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• It is the habit of the unthinking to turn to the illusions of economic magic. These unhappy times call for the building of plans that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Pyramids, Magic

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process

  Gerald Edelman

  Causes, Finals, Purpose

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• Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

  John Searle

  Essence, People, Consciousness

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