Coverage in the Sundays – a game of two halves. First of all, a pretty hostile review from Stephanie Flanders, former BBC Economics Editor and now JP Morgan Chief Strategist, in the Sunday Times. Here’s a pdf of the review: I Spend Therefore I Am, Sunday Times, 16th Feb. Flanders’ main complaint is that I take too broad a view of economics – well, that’s made clear throughout the book. ‘The true cost of calculatively rational, profit seeking, technical valuation methods derived from economic’s wouldn’t have made such a good title. She claims that we need instrumental rationality in, for example, the health service – granted, we do, but we need other forms of value, democratically discussed, as well. And she argues that we have choice. We do indeed, but what’s of interest is how these choices are made: we aren’t just ‘brains in jars’, as they say in science studies.
On the better side, four stars in the Sunday Sport. The review concludes, ‘Loads of economists are queueing up to slag this book off, which alone makes it an economically sound buy’. Nuff said. The review here:
Philip Roscoe 