Hi MF,

The broad sociological implications of the archetypical forms people use to interpret daily life is beyond me – the area where economists look at this is when we talk about “signalling”, “rules of thumb” or “focal points”, or sometimes it is implied when you hear an economist talk about “state dependence”.

My main point in this discussion is merely to say that, when economists build an argument, they need to think how their simplified exposition may be used by people – as that itself may be taken by individuals an archetypical relationship that holds. If we oversimplify a conditional result, it can then be misapplied by people in place – which can be harmful.

A broader conception of this would, as you imply, consider the way terminology impacts upon the way individuals coordinate with regards to what they value – or at an even larger stretch what they value. However, these issues run into deep questions that I am unable to answer – how do we know what others value? When someone makes a choice I do not understand, is it because they are different, or because they are “wrong”? The way we answer these questions changes the very nature of the types of ways we believe we should function as a group of individuals.

In many ways I think we are in an incredible place (specifically in countries such as New Zealand), but more open dialogue about trade-offs is necessary for us to move forward. I think Piketty was saying he only felt comfortable discussing the ideas he is discussing because the Cold War is over – and I suspect the economics discipline is going to be quite different, and hopefully more objective, due to that fact. In this way, the question of how we use language – and whether we are communicating information clearly to the public – is important.

Their psychological and archetypal destruction symolised, to me, the end of a narrative in Western Economics: Vast industries, for example, supply chains for the aircraft industry, were destroyed, many others paralysed; Indeed, we are still, 13 years later – with this blatant intrusion in our economic consciousness in the west dimmed to a distant memory – grappling with massive global economic problems, which may be drawn, in the larger scale of the overall state of human consciousness, to these failed – destroyed – symbols of global economics; One cannot ignore the vast psychological impact of this event in consciousness: A massive, direct intrusion in human awareness on an unprecedented scale, upon the archetypal symbols of economic wealth.
Today we see huge international forces coming into play such as a) movements to create a new platform for an international currency – china and Russia seem to be the front runners of this new standard. b) we see unprecedented amounts money printed in the West; Indeed, it seems as if a “new” currency is evolving: printed wealth – that is to say, wealth measured in “currency” other than productivity and which is predicated upon the assumption that the – dwindling – taxpayer base will foot the bill c) the changing role of reserve banks all over the world; d) We, nevertheless, seem to blindly follow, the Keynesian model, upon which this “wealth” was predicated – as an archetype. e) Investment in structures that may empower the middle class, the engine that drives the economic health of every nation to advance – absent, decimated by printed wealth, an inflation still to come and the propping up of an artificial stock market.

The Western world, indeed, the whole of the global economic world – seem to me to be ready for a new archetypal overhaul and its narrative. What in your view could the critical factors be that would form the ingredients of such new economic symbols?

Types like a dream, but if I misplace my fingers slightly I get confused 😛

That is pretty danged exciting tbh!