1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insights from one of the 20th century's most thoughtful and articulate economists, December 9, 2009
Heyne's perspective is especially important because of his unique background in both ethics and economics. He was an excellent economist, but his Ph.D. was from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and he continued to read widely in ethics, political economy, and theology throughout his lifetime. Thus, his writings are particularly effective in using his understanding to explain economics to ethicists, especially to Christian theologians.
Because Heyne believed that the positive-normative distinction that many economists make is false and that economics is profoundly normative at its very base, his essays can thoughtfully engage those who criticize the ethics of economics on their own grounds. Heyne draws a distinction between personal relationships and the impersonal workings of the market. He argues that most ethicists, with their focus on the actors' intentions, fail to understand the impersonal nature of markets and the positive outcomes that result when people pursue their own objectives with little knowledge of others' goals. The failure to understand the distinction between the personal and the impersonal keeps most ethicists from understanding how markets work and how a social-coordination system based on private-property rights and prices is both morally defensible and socially useful. In fact, in the world of impersonal market relationships, if everyone focused on the needs of others, the results would be disastrous: the system would "come to a halt, at enormous cost to all participants if they were to act consistently on the principle of advancing the welfare of the most needy or most worthy--rather than focusing on the accomplishment of their own personal goals" (p. 33).
Justice is nevertheless important, and Heyne developed a well-articulated standard of justice for the world of impersonal markets. Rule-coordinated behavior enables social cooperation to occur among people who do not know each other well, and the rules that work the best in this situation are "clearly defined and readily exchangeable property rights" (p. 178). Efforts to replace the rule of law with direct government intervention usually produce injustice. "The justice or injustice of a social system will not be found in the pattern of outcomes it yields--its end states--but in the procedures through which those outcomes emerge. This is simply the only kind of justice of which social systems are capable" (p.182)....
Although Heyne concentrated a great deal of his writing and speaking on the interplay of economics and ethics, he also made a substantial contribution to the teaching of economics. His text
The Economic Way of Thinking (12th Edition) was first published in 1973 and went through nine editions in his lifetime, and after his death, Peter Boettke and David Prychitko became coauthors. Owing to his textbook, Heyne became internationally famous as an innovative teacher of economics, and several essays in the volume edited by Brennan and Waterman summarize his approach to the pedagogy of economics. He believed that the economic way of thinking is a powerful and useful tool for understanding the world, but that only a limited number of concepts need be communicated to students in an introductory course. Most of these concepts can be articulated and used without the use of formal models, technical proofs, and elaborate graphs, which often cause the trees to hide the forest. His focus on the fundamental social-coordination process of markets and private property rights has influenced many economists, including me, to rethink fundamentally how they teach introductory economics.
I recommend Brennan and Waterman's collection to anyone who is concerned with the ethical implications and the efficacy of different social-coordination mechanisms. Paul Heyne was one of the most thoughtful and articulate thinkers of our time, and we are fortunate to have access to his ideas in this collection of his essays.
--Excerpt from a review by Peter J. Hill (
The Independent Review, Winter 2010)
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing and enlightening the whole way through, March 14, 2009
This review is from: "Are Economists Basically Immoral?": and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion by Paul Heyne (Paperback)
What's the price of a human life? "Are Economists Basically Immoral? and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion" is a look economics and the moral and social contract of the world. All too often economists must attach costs to things with high emotional value, such as human and animal life, and there is much scholarly discussion on this topic contained within the pages of this volume. "Are Economists Basically Immoral?" is quite the piece for discussion, as it is intriguing and enlightening the whole way through.
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