Ideas, Economic Emergence, and Society
Professor
Michael Munger
Econonomics
99F-02 Fall
2004
WF 10:05-11:20 (Art
04) Perkins 421
Office: Perkins
Library, Room
330
direct office phone: 966-4301
Office Hours: TBA
home phone: (919) 844-0154
(not after
Calendar Readings
Class Home Page: Go to http://www.duke.edu/~munger/ and
click on “courses”
What does it mean to be free? What is the good
society? How have ideas been used to
organize societies and allocate resources? Two alternative approaches can be
labeled the normative and the engineering, respectively. The normative asks the
question: what is the good society? How is that society organized? What ideas
of the "good" are embodied in different institutions of government,
and exchange? Do ideas "matter" in any important sense, or are there
evolutionary forces that drive societies in ways that are complex and
independent of ideas. This course will allow students to confront a variety of
ideas for "organizing" society, ranging from Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged to Thomas
More's Utopia
and Augustin's City
of God. A special emphasis will be placed on examining the
conflicts between "spontaneous" order arising from markets and
competitive democracy; "planned" order arising from socialism; and
"ordained" order arising from religious law.
In this course we will read selectively some of the
great works on both sides of this question. No definitive answers will be
reached, but we will concentrate on three sets of questions in considering each
reading.
Ethical foundation: What does this writer believe is the essence
of the ideal place of the citizen in the society?
Dialogue with other work: In this scheme, are the most important
restraints on liberty external and hierarchical, or internal results of
spontaneous, voluntary actions? How does
the writer answer potential counterarguments from other points of view?
Evaluation: Is the blueprint that this writer creates for
society workable? What techniques of quantitative analysis, including
study of data available from published sources, would allow us to evaluate this
conception of society?
PAPERS:
Bi-weekly
two page evaluations of arguments we have read, and talked about, in
class. At first, this “two page” business may seem easy, but it is bad
news, trust me. It is very difficult to make a useful, complete argument
in just two pages (600 words). Specific topic “questions” will be
suggested, but the particular point you choose to write on will be up to you.
GRADES:
Grades
for this class will be derived from the students
performance on a midterm exam, a final exam, and four two-page papers, as well
as class participation. These will have the following weights:
ITEM:
WEIGHT:
1.
Final Exam:
40%
Essay format, in scheduled exam period (Monday,
December 8,
2. 7 2-page
papers
42%
These papers will be graded very aggressively, on both
content and style. Must be typed.
3. Class participation:
18%
Ask or answer
questions! Students are expected to have done the reading before class.
TOTAL:
100%
Textbooks
(available at Bookstore in
- Isaac Asimov, Foundation Trilogy
Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation)
- Todd Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists
- Hernando
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
In addition, there are occasional handouts and other assignments that will be distributed as the semester progresses.
Whenever a reading is available on the WWWeb, the URL is given.
(August 25, 27):
Nature of Humans: The Idea of
Free Will
1. Paul’s “Letter to
the Romans” http://ebible.org/bible/web/Romans.htm
2. Society of Natural Science: http://www.determinism.com/definition.shtml
3. John Calvin, “Free Will and
Predestination,” from Institutes of the Christian Religion. (1537)
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/calvin.html
4. Ivar Ekelund, Mathematics and the Unexpected, Chapter 1 (e-reserves)
5. The Three Body Problem and Chaos http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CHAOS.html
6. St. Augustin of
Hippo, City of
Book
V (Fate and Free Will) http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120105.htm
Book
VIII (Death is Penal) http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120113.htm
(September 1 and 8)
(No class on Sept 3!):
The Purpose and Limits of
Government
1)
Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Book 1:
Foundation)
2) Selections from The
Federalist:
“About the
Federalist” http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/abt_fedpapers.html
Federalist
#10
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_10.html
Federalist
#51
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_51.html
3) Declaration
of
4)
5) McDonald, Novus
Ordo Seclorum, entire
(September
10 and 15):
The Good Society: Who
Rules? Who Serves?
1) Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Book 2: Foundation & Empire)
2) Plato’s Apology,
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
3) Plato’s Crito,
http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/jowett/crito.htm
4) Plato’s Dialogues, “The
Republic:” Sections 22-29 (stanza 471c to stanza
521b)
http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/jowett/republic.htm
PAPER #1:
Due Wednesday, September 22
Topic:
Assume you are Crito. Take up at the end
of the Dialogue, and convince Socrates to
leave with you.
(September
17, 22, 24, and 29):
Slaves and Monarchs, Constitutions
and Contracts:
“Covenants, Without the Sword, Are
But Words”
1. Aristotle’s Politics
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html
Book I
Books III-IV
2. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, Parts I
and II (Chapter 1 to Chapter 31, inclusive)
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html
3. Ayn
Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
PAPER #2:
Due Friday, October 1
Topic: What is the “good society”? Compare and contrast the visions of ANY TWO
of the following visions of the good society:
Aristotle, Hobbes,
(October
1, 6, 8, and 13):
Unit of Analysis: What is the “good”, and whose is it?
1) Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Book 3: Second Foundation)
2) Nicolò Machiavelli,
The Prince, http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm
3) Sun Tzu, Art of War, 
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html
Chapter I, “Laying
Plans”
Chapter II, “Waging War”
Chapter XII, “The Attack by Fire”
4) Thomas Aquinas, “Just War Theory,” Summa Theologica, Question 40
PAPER #3: Due Friday,
October 15
Topic: What is the position of the nation at
war? What are the duties of the prince,
or leader, of a society involved in war?
Is it possible for war to be “just“?
(October 15, 20 and 22):
The General Will: The Paradox
of
1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s On Social Contract, Books I-IV
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
2) Todd Buchholz, New Ideas From Dead Economists, Chapters 6 and 11
3)
PAPER #4: Due Wednesday,
October 27
Topic: What
is the moral status of property? Is
property always theft? Is it never
theft? When can I legitimately and
morally say that something is “mine,” and harm you if you try to take it or use
it?
(October
27 and 29, and November 3 ):
Markets and “Spontaneous Order”
1) Todd
Buchholz, New Ideas From Dead Economists,
Chapters 1-4
2) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations,
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html
Book I, Chapter 10
Book III, Chapter 1
Book IV, Chapter 2
3)
4) F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge
in Society,” American Economic Review, v. 35, 1945: 519-530.
(November 5 and 10):
Spontaneous
Cooperation?
1). G. Mackie, “Ending Footbinding
and Infibulation: A Convention Account.” American
Sociological Review, 1996 (available on JSTOR).
2) R. A.
Radford, “The Economic Organization of a POW Camp,” Economica,
November 1945, 189-201. (Available on JSTOR)
3) Cycles in Decision
Processes
PAPER #5: Due Friday,
November 12
Topic: When are individual goals and public good in
conflict? When are they coincident? Can we predict which is which with any
confidence?
(November 12 and 17):
John
Stuart Mill and Freedom of Speech
1) Buchholz, New
Ideas from Dead Economists, Chapter 5
2) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapters I and II
Speech
Codes on the College Campus: Some Resources
http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2003-2004/issue06/news/01.html
http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/freedom/aaup.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56294,00.html
http://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/archive/2003/WashTimes101703.htm
http://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/essays/abor.html
http://www.shadowuniv.com/waterbuffalo/wball.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200310/CUL20031006a.html
http://www.ultranet.com/~kyp/schools/bennet2.html
http://www.uark.edu/depts/comminfo/www/campus.speech.html
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~tlockha/pcdebate.htm
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/h/ha/hate_speech.html
http://www.aclu.org/library/aahate.html
http://www.CompleatHeretic.com/pubs/essays/pccodes.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-11-02-free-speech-cover_x.htm
http://www.integrity.duke.edu/geninfo/chronicle.html
http://www.integrity.duke.edu/ugrad/student.html
http://deanofstudents.studentaffairs.duke.edu/policies.html#integrity
(November
19 and 24):
Justice, Asset Ownership, and
Income Distribution
Karl
Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1844, with Engels)
http://noesis.evansville.edu/Author_Index/M/Marx,_Karl/
Karl Marx, Capital,
V. 1, Chapter
1 and Chapter
26
Jonathan
Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (1729)
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316ktexts/swift.html
V.I.
Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?” (1902)
http://gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Lenin/WD02i.html
- Chapter 2, part A
- Chapter 3, parts C,
D, and E
PAPER #6: Due Wednesday,
November 24
Topic: Write a speech code for
(November 29 and
December 1):
The Market, The
Mind, and Hierarchy
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
PAPER #7: Due Wednesday, December 1
Topic: In “Snow Crash,” we hear of a specific form
of organization of society, dictated by the market. Do you find this kind of system
plausible? Are we tending toward this
kind of purely privatized system? Is it
good, or bad? If it is inevitable, does
it matter? Could society be otherwise?
EXAM FOR THIS CLASS:
Wednesday, December 8
Exam time:
If you
cannot make this exam,
you must tell Prof. Munger
IMMEDIATELY
Academic
Calendar—also
online
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