If you’ve listened to this series before, you know I’m not a fan of the “physics envy” plaguing economics. I find a lot of the most relevant economic research to be overly mathematical, loquacious, and lacking a grounding in reality. One example I constantly hear about is GDP growth. Economists strive for never-ending economic expansion and assume this is possible. But this violates the law of the conservation of mass: we have finite resources and can’t continue growing indefinitely.
Economics has always been considered a social science, but maybe it should just be straight-up science. From Karl Marx to Steve Keen, many economists have strived to make economics more scientific. With this more scientific grounding, economics can better make sense of what is going on in the world, and hopefully regain the trust it has so sorely lost with the public.
This is not an argument for de-growth, but instead a more realistic understanding of how economies reproduce. My guest today helps move economics towards physics, but in a healthier way.
Dr. James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the University of Texas Austin, where he holds a professorship. He was the Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in the 1980s, and before that, an economist for the House Banking Committee. He chaired the board of Economists for Peace and Security from 1996 to 2016 and directs the University of Texas Inequality Project. He is a managing editor of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. He is the author of Entropy Economics, The End of Normal, and The Predator State. Dr. Galbraith earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his master’s and Ph.D. from Yale, all in economics.
Dr. Galbraith joined the Henry George School to discuss how entropy economics departs from conventional economics, why regulation is always necessary, and why there are markets, but no such thing as a “free market.”
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