ABSTRACT
Mainstream economic theory is based on a paradigm that dates back to the eighteenth century, and critics argue that is part of the problem. The world was a very different place when a Scottish moral philosopher wandered the grounds of the University of Glasgow in absent-minded reverie, thinking thoughts that would launch a new economic discipline that was called “political economy” before becoming simply “economics.” When Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, there were less than 800 million people roaming the earth, only the indigenous tribes and a handful of French Canadian trappers had any idea what lay between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast of North America, and Captain James Cook, spurred on by a British Admiralty reward of 20,000 pounds, was searching in vain off the coast of Alaska for a Northwest Passage back to the Atlantic Ocean. With the exception of small parts of China, India, and Europe, the world was a mostly empty place when the discipline of economics was launched.
