{"product_id":"the-dismal-science-how-thinking-like-an-economist-undermines-community","title":"The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community","description":"\u003cp\u003eSee \"Stephen Marglin on the Future of Capitalism\" at FORA.tv. Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous  self-interested  and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However  as Stephen Marglin argues  market relationships erode community. In the past  for example  when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns  not to his neighbors  but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising  but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations. Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries  this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946801819701,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674026543","price":69.11,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674026544.jpg?v=1769966885","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-dismal-science-how-thinking-like-an-economist-undermines-community","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}