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’.