Sunday, November 15, 2009

Lee Boldeman's Critique From Australia

Lee Boldeman's book, The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents is available in PDF. Boldeman does report some internal critiques of orthodox economics, such as Lipsey and Lancaster's theory of the second best. But, without having read the whole book yet, his perspective seems to be more about emphasizing an external critique of methodological individualism. Individuals are embedded in society. Boldeman says he wrote his book because he didn't know of another that covered what he wanted to say. I think his approach parallels Stephen Marglin's The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community. If Boldeman had read Marglin, he might still have wanted to write, since Marglin doesn't address the context of Australian public policy. Catholics in classes taught by the soon-to-be-gone department at Notre Dame would probably find Boldeman's book at interest.

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