Barefoot Running and Macroeconomics

Are we making any progress?
Sometimes I find myself wondering, as a whole, have we really made any progress?


I was listening to the radio the other day when I hard an interesting story about economics.  I know you're thinking, "How can economics be interesting?".  It was about a TV producer that was listening to a pod cast on economics and the financial melt down that we have been slugging through for sometime now.  The producer really liked how this econ professor was explaining things and wondered why more of the media did not present things this way.  Then, realizing that he was the media, he decided to contact the professor and start a project together to present economics in a more modern and enjoyable way.  This video was the result.





More information on their work together can be found at econstories.tv.

If you take the time to watch the video and listen to the lyrics.  The entire economic meltdown and bailout by the government has been debated for over a century.  And this is as far as we have come...

So how does barefoot running come in?  Well, I'm a runner.  And again, I was listening to the radio and a story about barefoot running came on... so right away I was paying attention.  The story was about a study that had been done showing how the human foot is really designed for barefoot running and when we run in running shoes, we run less efficiently and may be more likely to cause injury.  They are going to study the second part of this next.

So here is my point.  I know that we have developed many great inventions, and done all sorts of amazing things.  But are they really helping us?  Did the invention of the shoe and the subsequent development of running shoe technology make us bad runners?  Did years of debating macroeconomic theory make us any less likely to plummet into recession?  Well... I guess not.

A friend of mine posted this quote the other day that really made me think about this...

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to ... work, instead of living on public assistance.  Cicero - 55 BC

If we really have any hope of really making progress, maybe technology and economic theory are not the right things to look to for guidance.  Maybe we need to really start looking somewhere else...