Ross Gittins (SMH):
ASK economists who is the father of economics and almost all of them will say Adam Smith. But a new book makes the amazing claim the true father is Charles Darwin. And if you ask economists the question in 100 years' time, that's what they'll say.
and
''His observations persuaded him that the interests of individual animals were often profoundly in conflict with the broader interests of their own species,'' (Robert) Frank says.
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The only solution to the individuals' problem is for the (human) animals to act collectively. For them all to agree on a truce - a strategic arms limitation treaty, so to speak - or for some external authority, a government, to impose a solution on all of them. All would benefit from such an imposition so, contrary to the assumption of the libertarians, all are likely to welcome it.
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Hence the tendency as we become ever-more affluent for a growing share of our income to be spent on ''positional goods'' - goods or services which, as well as doing whatever it is they're supposed to do, also signal to the world by their expensiveness our superior position in the pecking order.
Frank concludes that the real reason we regulate markets is to protect ourselves from the consequences of excessive competition.
