Blog on Metaeconomics 

(Post updated July 2025) Instead of looking for an alternative to replace it (microeconomics), we should try to imagine an economic...

This Blog post continues the  Metaeconomics  series exploring the moral and empirical balance between  ego-based self-interest and empathy-based other (shared)-interest  in political economy. It follows earlier Blog posts —  The Two Roads to Serfdom  and  The Two Roads from Mont Pelerin  — by mapping a third road:  Authoritarian Nationalism , where democracy falters and empathy dies, and the economy goes down the Road to Serfdom. Together, the Blog posts show why  Dual Intere

Preface:  Building on a Review of Smith, Helmut Walser. Germany: A Nation in Its Time, Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020, 591 pp.   This Review was stirred by a recent vacation trip, a Danube River Cruise from Amsterdam with stops in several German towns and cities along the way to Vienna. The stop in Nuremberg --- the place where the Authoritarian Radical Nationalism of 1933-1945 in Germany was born, nourished, and died in

Smith (2020) explores the history and evolution of what sacrifice for country might mean, with the turn toward sacrifice for the fatherland coming into play in the 1300s, which is a kind of pre-condition for Nationalism.  By the 1900s, it was especially entrenched as represented in World War I, accepted by soldiers and others. But, Nationalism did not really appear until after WWI.  As Smith (2020) indicates:  “before 1914, perhaps even before 1918, Germans lived in an age of

Victory in Europe was accomplished by May, 1945 --- V-E Day is celebrated on May 8.  Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in effect avoiding taking any responsibility for what had occurred.  Smith (2020) details the huge numbers of both civilian and military deaths leading to the end. A LIVING CONCEPT OF FATHERLAND c. 1945–1950 Smith (2020) provides lots of statistics on the losses during the waning months of the war.  And while 80 percent of the Jews that had been

German citizenship now here in the 2020s reflects said empathy-with the other,  now a Nation no longer based on genetics, but rather is legalistic, as in:  “… children born to foreign parents (get) automatic German citizenship if one parent has been a legal resident of the Federal Republic for at least eight years and the child affirms German citizenship in some way before the age of twenty-three.”  It is about a mutual loyalty with the people living within the Nation of Germ

Metaeconomics using Dual Interest Theory  (DIT) is based in a serious and systematic attempt at integration across the realm of science & humanities (especially  ethics). So, integrating across the recent books addressing the matter of political systems especially as related to Nationalism is easily accomplished, as well as productive of new understanding. The integrating here is across the books by Hanson and Kopstein (2024), Hazony (2018, 2025), Levitsky and Way (2010), and

Review of Hazony, Yoram. 2018. The Virtue of Nationalism.  New York: Basic Books, 2018 (and Second Edition, Basic Liberty 2025).  ...

The key idea which frames the entire book is the Hazony claim that way to many Travelers on the Spaceship Earth see the independent...

I: Two Visions of World Order The two visions include 1) a supranational government covering the entire spaceship Earth something akin to...

VIII: Two Types of Political Philosophy Hazony, as political theorist/philosopher points to how political philosophy has two subjects: 1)...

XIX: Is Hatred an Argument Against Nationalism?   Hazony notes how some analysts claim it is Nationalism, to include both the secular and...

Reminder: In the new preface to Hazony (2025) it is proclaimed:   “In the American election of 2024, voters found themselves having to...

Williams points to Steven Pinker ( and indirectly, Deirdre McCloskey): “Given his celebration of inequality, it is perhaps unsurprising...

Marx was the champion of an extreme form of socialism as represented in communism.  In such a system, very little if any private property...

Williams points to how Mill also pointed to the “… persistent threat of economic inequality …  In On Liberty , Mill expresses concern...

Williams makes clear that Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx were all economists, as in political economists. Smith was actually...

Extreme inequality is like the plague, not good for economy or society. Yet, “Rousseau is aristocratic and comfortable with significant...

Hobbes is likely the least egalitarian of all the thinkers considered by Williams (2024).  Also, Hobbes was prone to favor not only...

Plato building on Socrates warned against path 0G of the Econs:  “(Plato makes clear) that economic inequality undermines the virtue and...