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EDITOR’S PICK Economists’ dogmas than in the US, UK and Australia.
What’s more, Boyer has a
The lab going nowhere at 28,000 km/h don’t always add up rather naive view of economic
From Guy Cox, St Albans, transactions in traditional human
out on board the ISS. New South Wales, Australia societies, focused on hunter-
The exception was an oblique In comparing the opinions of gatherer societies where “wealth”
reference to the skill sets of Russian economists with those of the is distributed equally. The
crew members, which I took to refer general public, Pascal Boyer headman or respected elder gets
to the routine running of the station. makes an interesting point the same share as everyone else.
Surely, any decisions concerning the (22 September, p 40). But from The coming of agriculture,
future of this wildly expensive facility there he works on the assumption some 10,000 years ago, changed
must depend on the nature and that the economists are right. this dramatically and soon led to
significance of the current and future As a scientist, I prefer to use huge inequalities in wealth and
work taking place there. If there observation rather than opinion status. For a striking example
are queues of vitally important in my work, and the 2008 global of how agricultural societies
experiments waiting for inclusion, financial crisis is enough to make functioned before the invention of
then that would be a reason to keep one suspicious of economists. money, look no further
From Bryn Glover, the ISS afloat. Let’s take one of Boyer’s than “How to read Inca” in the
Kirkby Malzeard, If, however, the ISS is simply being examples: “While 69 per cent of following issue (29 September,
North Yorkshire, UK sustained for symbolic reasons, then the public saw excessive executive p 33). Both these examples colour
Reading Leah Crane’s article on the I would say we should abandon it as pay as a reason the economy our present-day mindset, but
uncertain future of the International soon and as safely as we are able, wasn’t doing better, just 12 per Boyer ignores this, imagining
Space Station (6 October, p 24), I and redirect the billions of dollars it cent of economists did.” Yet in the some Arcadian past.
noticed that nowhere was any requires into the long list of terrestrial two powerhouses of the post-war Nymphs and shepherds come
reference made to the scientific problems that are urgently pressing economy, Germany and Japan, away – your world never actually
experiments that are being carried for a solution. executive salaries are much lower existed.
52 | NewScientist | 27 October 2018
