Who Cooked Adam
Smith’s Dinner? Chapter 2
For my blog post I chose to read the second chapter in
Katrine Marcal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s
Dinner?: A Story About Women and Economics. In this chapter we are educated
on how economists derive Daniel Defoe’s deserted hero, Robinson Crusoe, and
view him as the Homo economicus - the
first economic man.
It is natural to wonder how a racist, white man stranded on
a desert island holds any relevance to economics – this chapter explains how
clearly. In the market each individual is thought to be anonymous, in the sense
that personality traits and emotional ties play no relevance in the field. All
that matters is the ability to pay, and all that limits us are technicalities
such as the amount of hours in a day and our natural resources. In the story,
Robinson Crusoe acts completely out of self-interest, and his relationships
with other people, namely Friday, are completely centred on what they can do
for him. Robinson was born in York, England and studied law, but was
dissatisfied with the idea of a middle class life and ventured out in the world
in search of success, and found it. It was only after climbing aboard a ship
that ends up sinking that he finds himself isolated on a desert island with
only a few animals for company. In his logbook he lists money, materials, luck
and misfortune. With each situation, Robinson calculates benefits logically. He
is free from demands, envy and pride and is rather happy.
Marcal goes on to compare the way Robinson was isolated, to
how economists like to isolate people, and how the idea of a person shipwrecked
on an island makes it possible to contemplate how people would act if the world
around them didn’t exist. Ceteris paribus; ‘All other tings being equal or
constant.’ Robinson trades and buys regardless of the fact that money doesn’t
exist on this island, the goods are valued according to their demand. This
leads us into another story about shipwrecked men that is commonly used by
economists in order to illustrate the idea of value being determined by demand.
If we are to imagine two men, one of the men holds a sack of rice, whilst the
other has 200 gold bracelets. On the mainland, one gold bracelet would usually
be enough to purchase the rice. Now picture these men stranded on an island
together, and consider the value of their assets again. The value of both have
changed, because what is a person supposed to do with 200 gold bracelets on an
island with no market or no people? This is a favoured story amongst economists
according to Marcal, because it makes them feel as if they have “revealed
something profound about how mankind functions”. The problem for Marcal, is
that these stories never consider that these two men may converse, and share
the rice. These stories do not consider that human beings are capable of more
than trade.
Economists consider an economic man to be seductive in the
sense that he goes out into the world and works to get what he wants. He is
goal orientated and will destroy those who stand in his way. Economics decided
that it is man that should be studied. Economic man is rational and thinks in a
way that should optimise pleasure and prevent pain, his purpose is to be
successful and is the core of what we as people are. The economic man is free
in every situation and can “move through the environment like a world-class
chess player”. There is also the idea that being selfish and greedy serves a
greater good, if everyone was selfish, then in a “magical way” all selfishness
could be transformed into what is best for the whole, similar to Adam Smith’s
idea of the ‘invisible hand’.
