Working for the Men (and Women)
As all of you may or may not know, I have started a proper job. But while many of you out there have taken up "working for the man" I have taken up working for the men (and women) of the Transport Workers Union (TWU). While the job doesn't pay iBanker salary, I have always felt that I could never happily work to make some other guy rich, and I'm not. Instead of working for some guy, I am working for many, many guys and many, many gals, none of whom realitically expect to be rich, but all of whom dream of having a respectable life.
Four years of studying as a free-market economist will make you forget things. Four years ago I started studying economics because I wanted to help people with practical, intelligent economic policy. Four years later I had virtually forgotten that people, not numbers, the were the basis of the system. Or, rather, that the numbers in economics aren't simply statistics, they're peoples' lives. That justifying losses here with gains there isn't always OK because cost benefit isn't always about numbers. This isn't to say I regret the blinding I underwent to understand the subject. I now appreciate that the free market is a very powerful tool, and I've learned that there are harsh tradeoffs between a nice country and a dynamic country. What I'm saying is that now I'm ready to remember that economics is peoples' life, and I can't think of a better way to do that than to sit in my Union office and make a living of listening to their needs and their lives.
I've been working at the TWU for two weeks now and I've already learned a lot, or perhaps re-learned is more like it. But this time I haven't forgotten everything else I knew. Despite the reintegration of the plight of the working man into my mind, I still retain the mathematical and analytical models of competition and growth.
I'm not going to tell you what I've learned in this entry, I don't have the time. And I'm not going to say that I've got answers, even though I have some ideas. Instead I'd just like to let all the of economic conservatives out there that I understand where you're coming from, and I'd like to let all of the economic liberals out there know that I understand where you're coming from too; and you're both wrong.
Four years of studying as a free-market economist will make you forget things. Four years ago I started studying economics because I wanted to help people with practical, intelligent economic policy. Four years later I had virtually forgotten that people, not numbers, the were the basis of the system. Or, rather, that the numbers in economics aren't simply statistics, they're peoples' lives. That justifying losses here with gains there isn't always OK because cost benefit isn't always about numbers. This isn't to say I regret the blinding I underwent to understand the subject. I now appreciate that the free market is a very powerful tool, and I've learned that there are harsh tradeoffs between a nice country and a dynamic country. What I'm saying is that now I'm ready to remember that economics is peoples' life, and I can't think of a better way to do that than to sit in my Union office and make a living of listening to their needs and their lives.
I've been working at the TWU for two weeks now and I've already learned a lot, or perhaps re-learned is more like it. But this time I haven't forgotten everything else I knew. Despite the reintegration of the plight of the working man into my mind, I still retain the mathematical and analytical models of competition and growth.
I'm not going to tell you what I've learned in this entry, I don't have the time. And I'm not going to say that I've got answers, even though I have some ideas. Instead I'd just like to let all the of economic conservatives out there that I understand where you're coming from, and I'd like to let all of the economic liberals out there know that I understand where you're coming from too; and you're both wrong.
posted by Ben at 12:51 PM
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