The Anthropocentric Charge Against Economics
Don Roper
May 2001

Deep Ecology is intellectually centered as an attack on the anthropocentrism embedded in modern culture and its social sciences. The immediate retort by practioners of neoclassical economics (sometimes referred to here as 'Economics') is that the charge is completely unfounded. While nce (neoclassical economics) is obviously based on the maximization of welfare or utility of PEOPLE, not other life forms, the welfare of other lifeforms can and often do appear in those utility functions. While it is true that that nce utility functions include assumptions like non-satiability which may violate the green community's notion of what it means to be human, nce imposes no restrictions on the contents of human preferences.

But the critical part of the nce rejoinder to the anthropocentric charge from Deep Ecology is that Economics (we will take this proper noun as synonymous with nce), as a positive science, is concerned with what is, not what ought to be. Some people may prefer polar bears in the wild and others may prefer polar bears in zoos, but it is not the job of Economics to say who has the more legitimate or better taste. A major attribute of positive science is the ability to predict and predictions of what will be (not what ought to be) recognizes economic power. Wealthy individuals have more power in the market place than persons in poverty who nevertheless have more market power than horned toads. The ability to predict within this economic space is an expression of science, not an expression of what ought to be. This point is made forceably by a defender of nce, Herbert Gintis.

But is nce really a science free of ethical judgments? The core of nce concerns the notion of efficiency. The argument for, say, free trade, is that it generally yields a more efficient allocation of resources than trade restricted by, say, tariffs or quotas. But whether nce is making an argument that one tax system is more efficient than another or making an argument that free trade is more efficient than restricted trade, they (most :-) always recognize that there will be losers as well as winners when significant changes are made to the economic system. Even if 99% of the people affected by a given policy change are made better off and only 1% are made worse off, nc economists, in their effort to engage in positive rather than normative science, eschew interpersonal welfare comparisons.

The answer to the question of whether nce is genuinely ethically free has often been found in the celebrated works by Kaldor and Hicks. At the risk of oversimplification, the Kaldor/Hicks criterion used to justify typical nce policy recommendations is that, IF the winners COULD compensate the losers such that everyone could be better off, then the policy change is scientifically justified. Whether such compensation is, in fact, made or not depends on other government policies. And if the government fails to fully compensate the losers by taxing the winners? Oh well, mutter the Economists, that's just bad government, it is not our problem, we're scientists. But if policy makers, who never intend to fully compensate the losers, accept the Economists'   "scientific"   policy recommendations based on the K/H criterion, why do Economists think the advocacy of free trade is free of ethical judgment?

The ethical judgment introduced in the efficiency argument is merely the statement of the K/H criterion of efficiency. The K/H criterion of efficiency is basically making the ethical statement that

the welfare enhancement of winners is more important than the welfare loss of losers.
This argument, that nce is not the ethics-free science that it pretends to be, is not original -- others have made the observation that an ethical judgment is embedded in the K/H compensation principle. A quick search on the net will yield more statements of this criticism.

The more sophisticated practioners of   NC Economics realize the ethics embedded in the K/H compensating principle; consequently, discussions of the K/H compensation principle have gradually disappeared from NC textbooks -- more emphasis is now given to the "gains from (free) trade." But how do the gains (if indeed they exist in the magnitude proclaimed by NCEconomists) justify nce advocacy of free trade w/o ethical judgment? They don't, but mainstream Economics continues to preach free trade.

There are roughly three levels of sophistication in the practice of NCEconomics.

  1. those (who didn't read their textbooks carefully and) who believe that free trade necessarily raises everyone's welfare
  2. those who believe that in the absence of compensation that the advocacy of free trade is nevertheless ethically neutral
  3. those who think that free trade needs to be augmented with the further argument that free trade will provide further stimulus to economic growth which will "raise all boats"
The practioners of level 3 show few if any qualms of accepting fellow Economists from levels 1 and 2 as intellectual bedfellows -- I guess they need all the help they can get.

The reason I have re-articulated the ethics embedded in NC Economics is to provide essential background to the proposition that follows, viz., that NC Economics is anthropocentric. Please note that the argument that follows holds equally well for sophistication-levels 1 through 3.

When nce makes predictions from models based on the maximization of utility functions or preference orderings of humans, it does not ask what the dolphins wanted. The dolphins are powerless against humans -- if you want to predict in the sphere of Economics you give attention/weight to the movers and shakers in the economic world, not the fish, birds and other sentient beings. But the moment that nce moved

FROM


TO 		predicting


*judging*   		that the gains to the winners would exceed the losses of the losers     or
that sufficient economic growth would be induced to "raise all boats"

free trade as socially superior (to trade restrictions)

the raison d' etre for omitting the preferences of other sentient beings is Gone/Absent/Non-Existent...
It's one thing to omit economic weaklings when making predictions, but it is quite another to exclude other SBs when making ethical judgment.

Whether NCEconomists argue for tree trade on the basis that losers could be compensated by winners or that (pretty much) all humans will be made better off because of the economic growth stimulated by free trade, they make the ethical judgment that other sentient beings do not matter, except inasmuch as their welfare is found in the preferences of  homo sapiens.

Suppose (to be concrete for ease of exposition) that with the introduction of NAFTA (the North America Free Trade Association) other SBs took a hit -- that significant numbers of creatures in the wild died. nce takes refuge using the idea that the welfare of other SBs is represented in the preference orderings of the humans in the nce model. But wait. The original argument that nce was not anthropocentric is based on the idea of prediction -- one doesn't put preferences of other sentient beings (economic weaklings) into a model of predicting what will be. But the K/H principle of compensation is not a prediction of anything -- it is an ethical justification of policy based on the magnitude of winners' gains relative to losers' losses. But why are we restricting the losses to human losses?? From the perspective of deep-ecologists, it is totally unethical.

Consider the nce prediction that free trade will enhance economic growth sufficiently that all boats will be raised. Kenneth Boulding, the 1949 winner of the John Bates Clark award (and former president of the American Economic Association) made this quip

Anyone who believes that exponential economic growth can go on forever in a finite world is either madman or an Economist.

long before growth ceased to be regarded as a panacea to all economic problems. But even if economic growth were to raise all boats in some contexts, the "all" does not include other sentient beings. Whether or not economic growth is tagged on to NC advocacy of economic efficiency, such advocacy is an anthropocentric value judgment, not ethics-free science.

Conclusion: The anthropocentrism of nce is not in the exclusion of other SBs when making predictions, it is in exclusion of other SBs when making value judgments. But as long as nc economists are in denial that they are making value judgments -- as long as they neglect the fact that the K/H compensation principle and calls for greater growth are ethical propositions that omit the welfare of other sentient beings -- they will continue to be in denial that 'economic science,' as they call it, is anthropocentric.