Beyond ’Fictional Economic Man’

Re: Faraz

Regarding point 3 of your response:

Pakistan might be behind as far as ethics are concerned but probably not by as much as you postulate. It is amazing how corrupt the more ``civil`` societies are. Although there is absolutely no doubt about how morally decayed we have become but we do have the tendency to sell ourselves short at times. For example, when corruption ratings of countries around the world came out a couple of years ago, very few amongst us dared to question the credibility of these rankings, or find out about the background of the organization which conducted the study. Moreover, people continue to quote the older one of these reports which claimed that Pakistan is the second most corrupt nation in the world -- we did drop down to fifth place last year according to an updated version (WOO HOO!). I wonder about the reasons behind this sort of behavior.

Finally, I`m not denying what you have outlined as a major impediment to Pakistan`s development, only trying to reconcile what you and the ever-so-prevalent conspiracy theorists believe. I agree with you to an extent but then if you overdo it you risk making any potential approach toward (economic) reform a bit too technocratic.

And as if what the author talks about was not enough, an increasing number of new Pakistani economists are subscribing to Keynesian theory -- most mind-bending!

Re: Raza

HA! But that`s merely one chapter out of our ``Encyclopedia Problematica``.