Trust, Paul Zak the rate of poverty and wealth is directly related to the trust we have between each other. Trust is the big gun ecomonist are looking for, it is the one variable that captures if things are going good or bad. It is trust in other people that traslates into how well our govenment will work
All desicions are economic, should you marry girl a or girl b, should I have one or two children, fundamentally all economics is about evaluating desicions.
In societies wher trust is high then we have quicker and functional trans actions.
Freedom is esentisl to this process ... and without trust there can be no freedom.
trust
People make gut choices,
Economics is based on this human process of making choices. In ture human choices are make becuase of our human condition. Finacial networks where that are so many steps removed from the process, the human self and cause. Centralized transactions that become more about turning volume, directed only by causal effect of profit willl cause us to fail to see the point of the human relation that lies at the very cause of the economic activity. Cooperative free market community economies permit the resulting social form to be more true to the human need rather than to the strict finacial activity directed to profit.
This is in no way a statement that the profit motive is a bad thing. The point is only that in large scale systems of production removes the individual perspective from the process.
On market economies... Trade makes both parties better off, to think of magnificent acts to serve others. The economic point of view is more significant than, economics driven by altruism versi greed as the economic presmiss to the invisible hand, profit that is both monitary and human.
Interview http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/radio/bok.rm