Vanredni broj: Knjige za 2050. godinu
Ovo je vanredni broj jer hoću samo da podelim nešto dostupno na drugom mestu. Časopis Econ Journal Watch pitao je svoje autore, uključujući i mene, interesantno pitanje.
Ako bi 2050. godine trebalo da preporučiš literaturu nekome ko će tada imati 40 godina, a ko već ima sličan pogled na svet kao ti, koje knjige ili radove objavljene do sada u 21. veku bi preporučio? I zašto?
Moj puni odgovor na engleskom kopiram ispod. To je nekoliko knjiga iz 21. veka za koje mislim da će vremenom postajati sve važnije, i kod svake je kraće obrazloženje. Nema smisla da to sada prevodim, ali ću se kroz buduća pisma, kada bude pogodovalo temi, svakako vraćati na ove motive.
Dostupna je i objavljena verzija odgovora, zajedno sa odgovorima drugih autora. Ima interesantnih komentara i preporuka (tu su još i Cass Sunstein, Alberto Mingardi i drugi).
Evo mog dela:
In 2050 we may be thinking along very different ideological lines and across dimensions we rarely give any thought to today. We have been witnessing ideological readjustment in the Western world for more than a decade. But the rise of various brands of populism, duly noticed and much discussed, may only be a materialization of more profound technological and epistemological changes that several authors have observed.
1. Martin Gurri. 2014. The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.
Technological changes, including the rise of social media, have led to the flattening of authority. As Gurri first suggested in his belatedly acclaimed book, the vertical sources of authority in the form of the established media, corporations, government or academia have precipitously lost their standing. The horizontal flows of information and ideas have suddenly started to play a much larger role in our political economy.
2. Iain McGilchrist. 2009. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
It was not simply that technology upended the means of communication and changed the ways we interact. As Iain McGilchrist daringly proposed in 2009, we may also be witnessing a historic epistemological shift from the dominance of the general, abstract, theoretical, and deductive style, towards concrete, mundane, inductive, common-sense and practical thinking. McGilchrist traces the shift to neurological causes, but even if the causality is challenged, his mere identification of the shift is a precious accomplishment.
One example of such shift in economics is the increasing appreciation for the empirical work at the expense of high theory. The pages of academic journals are filled with empirical findings, scholars are perfecting methodologies of casual inference, and Harvard’s introductory economics course is purging theory to become empirical. The growing availability of data has also helped the flight from theory.
3. Gerd Gigerenzer. 2007. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious.
The best known attack on theory fundamentals in economics has been the one coming from behavioral economists. While behavioral economics in the tradition of Kahneman and Tversky has been widely publicized and rewarded, Gerd Gigerenzer’s work on common sense and ecological rationality epitomizes the true break. Gigerenzer is a prolific author, but the 2007 book is a particularly useful summary of his ideas relevant for economists and others concerned with knowledge and decision making.
4. Nassim Taleb. 2012. Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.
Published in 1998, James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is just outside the limits set for this assignment. Scott’s book is a forerunner of the newest wave of literature that attempts to reestablish vernacular, experiential, and circumstantial learning, against overly rigid, linear, and abstract reasoning. Scott, McGilchrist and Gigerenzer provide the epistemological foundations, but Nassim Taleb’s Antifragility – and really his entire Incerto (2001-2018) series – puts flesh on the bones by providing insights valuable in economics, policy, finance, and everyday life.
5. Jeffrey Friedman. 2019. Power Without Knowledge.
Jeffrey Friedman, a longstanding critic of the possibility of expertise in economics, political, and social affairs, takes epistemic skepticism even further in his most recent book. The consistency of his doubt in our ability to know, understand and manage may well be vindicated with time.
6. Patrick Deneen. 2018. Why Liberalism Failed.
Liberalism from the title of this book is not the modern American political liberalism, nor is it classical liberalism alone. Deneen uses it to denote the entire Lockean individualistic constitution, and then argues that such liberalism is failing under its own weight. If the technological and epistemic changes I pondered above are important at all, and if it is true that they may be changing the landscape of political ideas, Deneen’s 2018 book may turn out to be especially prescient.