I love my Economics of the Developing World class and I am going to miss it greatly when the semester ends. The professor is a very empathetic Indian man and his favorite saying is, “You’ve got to have some compassion with your passion! Have a heart!” He admits that markets fail on a regular basis and doesn’t bellow about free trade creating wealth when someone mentions fair trade or, gods forbid, the unprivileged proportion of the global population which does not see any of said wealth up close. At my lower-end* undergrad university the majority of the economics faculty are blatantly right-wing neoclassical, a philosophy I bought as a wee impressionable sophomore because professors are always correct, right? but puked back not long after my first economics course. As my degree requires a sizable handful of economics credits, I have suffered through five semesters of overly-idealized efficiency-oriented poo, so this class was a relief. I enjoy shitting on classical economics from a great height** at least three times per week. The conversation in my head goes something like this…
Me: But, free-market economists, free markets do not actually exist and your ridiculous assumptions do not hold up on even a very small scale!
Adam Smith: *plays with the Invisible Hand*
Me: Property rights are not enforced in the developing world! Externalities are common even in the developed world! Technology is not constant, competition isn’t perfect, and I need a nap.
Adam Smith: *forms the Invisible Hand into an extremely rude gesture, which I ignore because the Hand is, well, Invisible*
Me: I’m going to find a great height from which to shit and while doing so I will think about the government’s role favorably and it won’t just protect private property rights and sometimes mess with interest rates!
Adam Smith: *lurches away, dragging the invisible hand, as zombie economists of yesteryear will*
And now for that nap…
*Some programs are decent, some are impressive, some are understaffed and sad. That’s what happens when the state decides public universities aren’t worth funding.
**Phrase blatantly stolen from another favorite faculty member. Say it with a Scottish accent if you want to be a happier person.
