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Tweaking the Axioms
My last argument reasoned from experience that we need no money motive to
consume, and that pay tends to cover our maintenance needs. But that wasn’t
strictly in the axioms. | assumed a mortal and reproducing population strategizing
for means to satisfy tastes, and more generally aims. I didn’t say out loud that the
population in fact survives. Now I do. Let’s specify that the population has motive
and means for lineage survival, whether in a group selection or kin selection sense.
The means can be specified as skill sets, as an adult norm, sufficient to earn
maintenance consumption needs for themselves and invested consumption needs
for their young together. As to motive, I will specify at last that maintenance
consumption is exhausted in satisfying our taste for survival. I already as much as
assumed this in arguing that we need no money motive to consume.
This assumption of motive and means amounts to the biological imperative. It is
hardly new to economics. It is the essence of Petty’s overlapping generations model
of 1662 in A Treatise of Taxes. It is the essence of the equilibrium wage theory of
Smith in 1776 and Ricardo 1817, where pay converges to the level holding the work
force intact. It is the essence of Malthus’ population principle of 1798 and 1801,
chosen by Senior as his first axiom in his Outline of 1836. It is the essence of the
productive consumption theory developed from Malthus through Mill in 1848.
It lapsed from attention with the marginalist revolution beginning with Jevons and
Menger in 1871, ironically the year of publication of Darwin’s The Descent of Man,
because the marginalists treated explanations of tastes as irrelevant. I happen to be
a huge fan of the marginalists. But they’ve made their point. The microeconomics
they founded is a rich and mature science. It needs no assumptions as to what
explains our tastes. But macro is not doing so well. I believe that it must start over,
and that a grasp of motives helps.
Chapter 6: Parallels with the Firm 2/4/16 14
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