tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post1442670598465950065..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: A new take on the gold standard?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-26982648336075224572015-03-29T10:21:35.799-04:002015-03-29T10:21:35.799-04:00There should be a field called "evolutionary ...There should be a field called "evolutionary economics" that looks at how the human genome has changed in response to our changing social environment. <br /><br />A rough estimate is that adult lactose tolerance took 2,500 years to evolve after the development of animal husbandry. This is considered extremely rapid, and it is hypothesized that famines heightened the pressure to adapt.<br /><br />Meanwhile, there is the genetic variation that leads a very small percentage of the population to hoard money for its own sake. Is this an adaptive mutation in a money economy? Why do economists view this mutation as universal despite it's extreme rarity?<br /><br /> In hunter gather societies such behavior would have been extremely maladaptive for both the individual and the society and might have justly led to early societitally imposed death. <br /><br />Perhaps we need to return to such a program of eugenics?Thornton Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11402495641975262697noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-23999810608183940682015-03-25T15:10:14.084-04:002015-03-25T15:10:14.084-04:00Wow, a revival of the old Freudian economics, but ...Wow, a revival of the old Freudian economics, but in a literal way! Cool, michael.<br /><br />The height of this sort of stuff was back in the 1960s with works by people such as Norman O. Brown, although none of these people were economists, specifically. They were more like 60s hippies into free love and overcoming sexual repression, with being obsessed with fecal money one of those reprssions one needed to overcome, probably with the help of some psychedelic drugs along the way.<br /><br />Of course, the older cultural take on the gold standard was from Engels (if not Marx), who observed that credit banking developed in Protestant nations like Calvinist Scotland where they believed in salvation by faith, whereas fascination with gold and resistance to paper and credit was stronger in Catholic countries, with their emphasis on salvation by works. Let me see the gold!rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.com