The Public Lecture
How do economies work?
Two-flow economics accounts accurately for the health, or lack thereof, of any economy. It adverts to the fact that there is an underlying two-flow and five-function dynamics of economic activity. It not only accounts for the familiar distinction between consumer and capital goods and services, but it also draws out the significance of the distinction between the two types of production associated with them ― what Bernard Lonergan called basic and surplus. As such, it also identifies the respective basic and surplus supply and demand functions, along with a redistributive function that is for a remainder class of transactions that include the stock market, and other second-hand trade, and that also mediate international trade.
Why do we need to understand how economies work?
Mainstream economics has not yet identified the underlying two-flow and five-function dynamics of economic activity. In fact, for all of their mathematical and philosophical sophistication, current mainstream models are utterly remote to actual economies. Whatever prices, quantities, wages and interest rates happen to be, and regardless of statistics of decisions to buy, sell, produce, or invest, there is the question of how these all work together. Understanding how economies work will provide a basis for identifying (1) the destructive cycle of contemporary economic teaching and practice, and overcoming (2) dysfunctional behaviour imposed on free markets. Both (1) and (2) take for granted the legitimacy of current economic models, metrics and strategies. Both fail to account accurately for the health, or lack thereof, of any economy, either locally or more broadly. Both inevitably lead to ongoing financial crises, trade wars, and widespread poverty.
How will implementing that understanding benefit the world?
Understanding how economies work will provide a general standard by which to guide economic activity toward meeting everyone’s needs regularly and to helping make life livable. Future economists will become stewards of local economies and of economies more broadly. Future politicians will benefit from economists’ economic counsel. Ultimately, economists will contribute collaboratively to the dissolution of counter-intuitive divisiveness and will undermine the opportunity for peculation that routinely erodes trust in political institutions.
Who are some of the major influencers on the global economy? How do they operate?
What challenges affect how economics
is taught and practiced worldwide?
What is Bent On Futurology?
Bent On Futurology is an online outreach to international communities and institutions. Its aim is to communicate a secure basis for sustainable human dignity in the long term by introducing fresh solutions to concrete problems in education and economics. It practices a new kind of journalism, a fusion of journalistic and scholarly writing that not only appeals to a wide audience but also avoids implied simplification.
The content of Bent On Futurology is intended for educational purposes and is independent of partisan political and ideological bias.
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