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This reveals my bias for economic history. It seems dry as a bone until you find
something terrific like those insights. It happens that I had written both theories,
and published one, decades before | found those great precedents. Should I have
been chagrined? Of course not. Forgotten or unnoticed precedents are at least as
much fun to point out as the surprises they showed ahead of me.
I will also reveal a bias for evolutionary biology. Its main axiom, the biological
imperative, becomes one of mine. The idea is that behaviors are selected for
successful reproduction. | will try to show that the classical school treated this as
axiomatic from Petty through Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Mill. Malthus was only
the most obvious case. It lapsed from attention when a brilliant new insight called
marginalism preferred to do without explanations for tastes.
Above all comes my bias for the great thinkers in those fields. We saw that as to Bob
Trivers. Although | often cite them to disagree with them, | see all as giants from
whose shoulders | slip in trying to climb. I don’t kick sand on 97-pound weaklings.
Mill was a mensch who gives us all lessons in attribution and generosity, particularly
to schools he disputed, and who nonetheless didn’t mind being a minority of one in
his books or in parliament.
Petty was something beyond. Polymath, self-made tycoon, anatomist, music teacher,
father of national accounts, originator of present value theory and human capital
and next generation theory, and esteemed by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx for
other innovations I don’t mention. Such men are understood slowly and
incompletely.
Forward By The Author 04/18/16 4
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| Filename | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_010916.jpg |
| File Size | 0.0 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 85.0% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 1,706 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-04T16:12:17.055675 |