More Civil Societies with Eva Cox: Economics
The Dow Jones created a frenzy this week as stocks plummeted by almost 1,600 points, the lowest since August 2011.
As shareholders worry about the future of their stocks, Eva Cox asks the question: “when did economics become a powerful way to explain the world?”
Gone are the optimistic days of creating social change to better understand human behaviour in order to create a better world. Although, economics is considered a social science, Eva says “it seems it has left the social out of it”. Economics’ popularity in the 1980s was rooted in globalisation and neoliberalism, however, Eva argues, it’s “not very good at predicting human behaviour”.
“Those assumptions about the way we behave really don’t hold very well… when people get pessimistic, they sell, when they get optimistic, they buy. It’s got nothing to do with what’s happening in society and the wider world; it’s all about money, capital and profit.”
