The first words of Steven Landsburg's great book The Armchair Economist are:
Most of economics can be summarized in four words: "People respond to incentives." The rest is commentary.Love the book, hate the line. Sure, technically it's true, but it's true in a way that tautologies are. It's true but completely uninformative. How do they respond to what incentives? The devil's in the commentary. Saying that "People respond to incentives" is the essence of economics is kind of like saying that:
Most of physics can be summarized in four words: "Everything is a wave."
Most of game theory can be summarized in two words: "People strategize."
Most of biology can be summarized in five words: "Random mutation and natural selection."
Most of evolutionary psychology can be summarized in three words: "Cognitive traits evolved."
Most of statistics can be summarized in eleven words: "When repeated large number of times, random events show predictable patterns."The rest is just commentary.
Oh, what about politics? Personal relationships? Music? Math?
ReplyDeleteYes, my list is incomplete. I do, however, have to stop somewhere. (That's code for "I ran out of sense of humor.")
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