Answer, If Thou Knowest

Alex Tabarrok (link) has a bit of good fun at his own expense:

Creative Destruction?
I met a friend recently that I hadn't seen since high school. I told her I was an economist. "Oh," she said in the nicest possible way, "I'm surprised, you were so creative in high school." Sigh.

I’m sure exactly what lesson Alex draw from this, although I suppose I could make a guess. I will, however speculate, that she might be onto something, even if perhaps not what Alex thinks, or she thinks.

As the fella says, some of my best friends are economists. I read their stuff with interest and I wish I’d done more econ in school. I like, among other things, their natural inquisitiveness and their catholicity of taste (two good reasons, inter alia, for reading Alex’s blog).

But I will suggest one important quality that economists often lack: a sense of wonder. They’re good at saying: hm, that’s odd, I wonder why people do that? The trouble is, they’ve always got an answer. It might not be a wacky answer, and it might even be a good answer, but it’s always an answer.

Part of the problem is, I suspect, structural. Life in econ is a struggle every day: you always have to prove you’re cleverer than the next guy. Not having an answer is not an option. Standing back gobsmacked with your jaw slack is just not going to get you promotion or tenure. But recall the voice out of the whirlwind:

4. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

5. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

6. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

7. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8. Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

--Job 38, 4-8 (KJV)

Ask an economist, he’d probably give you an answer.