“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.” MatterFactsLevelsDealsEnvironmentParticularBehaviorConsciousEconomicsBeing TrueInstanceUnconsciousOrganismsSinkingPragmaticGeneralities Author:Gregory Bateson
“Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.” PeopleHumansIndividualSocialHuman NatureTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsComplexesObservationLimitationBehaveRelyAbstractSubtleGroundedFree MarketRationalismSocial BehaviorCrackpots Author:Ellen Willis
“Broadly speaking, Keynesianism means that the government has a specific responsibility for the behavior of the economy, that it doesn't work on its own autonomous course, but the government, when there's a recession, compensates by employment, by expansion of purchasing power, and in boom times corrects by being a restraining force. But it controls the great flow of demand into the economy, what since Keynesian times has been the flow of aggregate demand. That was the basic idea of Keynes so far as one can put it in a couple of sentences.” MeanHas BeensIdeasGovernmentCoursesForceResponsibilityEconomyCoupleDemandBehaviorEconomicsFlowSentencesEmploymentExpansionRecessionsAutonomousPurchasingRestrainingKeynesPurchasing PowerKeynesianism Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
“Economists suffer from a deep psychological disorder that I call 'physics envy'. We wish that 99 percent of economic behavior could be captured by three simple laws of nature. In fact, economists have 99 laws that capture 3 percent of behavior. Economics is a uniquely human endeavor.” HumansFactsLawSufferingThreeWishSimpleEconomicBehaviorPercentEconomicsInvestingEnvyPhysicsPsychologicalEndeavorCaptureDisorderEconomistLaws Of NatureCapturedPsychological Disorders Author:Andrew Lo
“[A] private property regime makes people responsible for their own actions in the realm of material goods. Such a system therefore ensures that people experience the consequences of their own acts. Property sets up fences, but it also surrounds us with mirrors, reflecting back upon us the consequences of our own behavior.” PeopleActionMaterialsBehaviorConsequenceEconomicsResponsibleMirrorsPropertyRealmsGoodsSurroundRegimesFenceReflectingPrivate PropertyReflecting Back Author:Tom Bethell
“Neoclassical economics ... has uncovered important truths about the nature of money and markets because its fundamental model of rational self-interested human behavior is correct about 80% of the time.” HumansImportantSelfBehaviorModelsEconomicsFundamentalsRationalHuman Behavior Author:Francis Fukuyama
“Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.” HumansDesireBehaviorEconomicsHuman Behavior Author:Michael Joseph Oakeshott
“The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience.” MenWorldHumansLittlesRealHardFormValuesPsychologyToo MuchPossibilityTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsContraryFoolishRationalProfessorsReal WorldEfficientMistakenHuman BehaviorFoolish ManEfficient Markets Author:Charlie Munger
“I don't have too much interest in teaching other people how to get rich. And that isn't because I fear the competition or anything like that - Warrenhas always been very open about what he's learned, and I share that ethos. My personal behavior model is Lord Keynes: I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, and so I could do other things like give talks on the intersection of psychology and economics. I didn't want to turn it into a total obsession.” PeopleWantGivingWantedTurnsInterestLordRichPsychologyToo MuchShareTeachingBehaviorModelsEconomicsIndependentCompetitionObsessionGet RichEthosIntersectionsKeynesTeaching OthersPersonal Behavior Author:Charlie Munger
“And with the Occupy Movement, it's really ironic how the police come as representatives and enforcers of the powers that be, even though the people in the Occupy Movement are really on their side - not in terms of their behavior, but in terms of their economic status, in terms of who the police are in society and how much they're paid, and if you boil it down to the economics of it, the police should be out there marching with the Occupy Movement.” PeopleIfsShouldSidesTermEconomicMovementBehaviorEconomicsPaidPoliceIronicRepresentativesOccupy MovementEconomic Status Author:Oren Moverman
“The good news is that, at least in economics, I've seen movement away from its overemphasis on mathematical models of purely rational behavior to a more eclectic and commonsense approach: research that is, among other things, more respectful of insights from psychology.” PsychologyMovementBehaviorApproachNewsModelsResearchEconomicsInsightRationalMathematicalGood NewsRespectfulEclecticMathematical Models Author:Robert J. Shiller
“When you look at any experimental work not directly related to economics, but trying to test rational behavior in other ways, experiments have conspicuously failed to show rational behavior. Macro evidence certainly suggests deviations from rationality, but I don't want to say the rationality hypothesis is completely wrong. If you have any introspective idea or experimental idea about people's behavior, it seems to be incompatible with the really full scale rational expectations.” PeopleIfsWayWantTryingLooksIdeasShowsSeemsBehaviorExpectationsEvidenceEconomicsTestsScalesExperimentsRationalRelatedRationalityHypothesisIntrospectiveDeviationMacro Author:Kenneth Arrow
“The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.” HumansHeartRealProblemReligionEconomicCreationBehaviorEconomicsRelationSeatsArenaHuman RelationsReal ProblemsEconomic ProblemsEconomy And Economics Book:The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes Source: The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes
“Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one's moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime.” WorldHumansValuesEvilLeftTermCommonMoralClassPovertyEconomicCrimeExampleBehaviorEconomicsGood And EvilDividedHuman BehaviorDividingMoral ValuesCitingValue SystemsEconomic Class Author:Dennis Prager
“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” WarSchoolDifficultSimpleBusinessBehaviorEconomicsManagementComplexesRewardsInvestingSimplicityBuffetsBusiness SchoolGood BehaviorInvestment SuccessRisk And Reward Author:Warren Buffett
“Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.” ImportantSelfIndividualInterestConditionsBehaviorEconomicsCompetitionTriumphAnalysisAdamSelf InterestSystematic Author:George Stigler
“Metaphor isn't just a fancy turn of speech. It shapes our thoughts and feelings, reaches out to grasp new experience, and even binds our five disparate senses. James Geary's fascinating and utterly readable I is an Other brings the news on metaphor from literature and economics, from neuroscience and politics, illuminating topics from consumer behavior to autism spectrum disorders to the evolution of language. As a writer, as a teacher, and as someone just plain fascinated by how our minds work, I've been waiting years for exactly this book.” YearsMindBookFeelingsTurnsLiteratureLanguageWaitingFiveTeacherEvolutionShapesSpeechBehaviorNewsEconomicsMetaphorSensesConsumersFancyFascinatingDisorderFascinatedReach OutAutismOur ThoughtsTopicsNeuroscienceSpectrumThoughts And FeelingsNew ExperiencesIlluminatingEvolution Of Language Author:James Richardson