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Home Economicus: An Endangered Species

February 12, 2015

Home Economicus: An Endangered Species

The modern world is full of myths. I’m not talking about Greek legends or medieval lore, but the shared stories and constructs underpinning our beliefs and behaviours. We need myths—they help us understand and feel in control of our world—but when they blind us to reality, they can serve as obstacles to change. As long as I accept, for example, that being richer and thinner will make me happy, I’m not actually likely to find happiness. We may not believe in the pantheon of ancient gods, but many of us still believe in mythical creatures that clearly don’t exist, like the infallible celebrity or the unimpeachable leader.

Homo economicus, the mythical creature of neoliberal economics, is one such persistent presence, despite a thorough debunking by commentators and academics. This bizarre specimen is supremely autonomous, free of social bonds, lacking any emotion and interested only in what will make himself [sic] happy. Homo economicusacts within (and only within) a market full of others like himself, each with equal knowledge and resources, each seeking to maximise financial gain.

Both the actor and the market are completely fictional, yet they still serve as a model for much economic thinking. Behavioural economics, beloved of the current government and a heavy influence on our financial regulators, purports to demonstrate how humans are in reality subject to bias and error. Yet by depicting any deviations from rationality as a form of weakness or susceptibility, the discipline betrays its assumption that calculating self-interest is the ideal.

 

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Is Ebola the real ‘World War Z?’ (Spoiler alert: It’s not)

October 19, 2014

Is Ebola the real ‘World War Z?’ (Spoiler alert: It’s not).

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In 2006, I released a novel about a global zombie plague that drives humanity to the brink of extinction. While the zombies may have been fake, I tried to anchor the human response (political-military-economic-cultural) in reality. I studied the history of pandemics, natural disasters and industrialized warfare. I interviewed doctors, soldiers, journalists and someone who “has never gotten a check from the CIA” in an attempt to illustrate the fragile global systems that shield our species from the abyss. As a result, I’ve been repeatedly asked if the current outbreak of Ebola is the real-life incarnation of my novel. As much as any author would love to crow about how “I predicted this!”, this time, I’m happy to say, my fictional plague could not be more different from the truth.

It could be argued that there are some similarities between the initial Ebola outbreak in West Africa and my fictional virus. Early on, there were missed warnings, such as a U.S. intelligence group’s failure to mine data that was written in French. There was also an obvious lack of interest on the part of the industrialized world. Not only were the headlines already taken up by Islamic State and the war in Ukraine but, let’s be honest, ignoring the plight of Africans is shamefully commonplace in the First World.

 

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