The Ultimate Question of Economic Science? It’s Eugenia or Dysgenia.

Peter Boettke posted an article by Paul Krugman yesterday which referred to the divisions in economics – with derision.

And it’s been bothering me all night:

Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives demonstrate an inter-temporal division of reproductive labor in their moral biases and cognitive biases.

So why wouldn’t economists follow the same moral, inter-temporal division of labor?

Well, they do. All humans do.

Austrians represent the conservative long term: accumulation and competitiveness, and new Keynesian progressives the short term: consumption and reproduction.

The question is whether consumption/dysgenia or accumulation/eugenia is preferable.

This is the central proposition. And we avoid answering it just as much as our ancestors avoided the question of the existence of gods.

Until we answer that question all economic debate is just obscurant deception as a means of avoiding the central question of economics: what is it that we are solving for?

I can answer that question because western history answered it for us.