Destiny of Choice 007

Economics of Destiny

G: We are destined to discuss the independence of economic choices made by people!

S: It seems so. Please prove that economic choices of human beings are independent choices. Giving examples may help me better appreciate your point of view, if I am so destined.

G: Fine. Let us take the case of a car driver working for a small businessman in Kolkata. He is 32 and comes from an agricultural family in Bihar. His wife and two children live along with his mother and younger brother in the village in Bihar where they have adequate farm land to grow rice, wheat, vegetables and fruits that cover their needs and also to sell in the market to raise cash for buying other necessities including clothes, utensils, soaps, medicines, cooking oil, spices, cooking medium, etc as also pay for children’s education and doctors. Some of the money from sale of farm produce helps meet working capital needs for farming. He himself earns about Rs. 45,000 a year, lives in a small shelter shared by a few friends on payment of rent and run a joint dinner kitchen for them. He visits his village three/ four times a year and contributes about half his income to the family back in the village.

S: OK. What economic decision does he take?

G: None. The chained may have nothing to loose. But all are chained to choices that one has to make. The Driver had made choices that he had to make forced by the circumstances and his genetic codes. Nothing was decided by him. He was born in the family he did not choose. His tendencies were shaped by his genetics and the environment in which he grew: both the genetics and the environment were not of his choice. His and his family's economic rationality is the result of genetics and environment that neither he or anyone else had chosen. He could have earned more had his family reallocated the wealth by selling the farm land and going into cash/ bank deposit investments. But this choice was not within the feasible zone for him and his family, given their attachment to land and the uncertainties of the future, their education background and so on. He is one of the Yadavs who could not become a politician and minister in India. Certain other Yadav had only one choice: to become a politician and a minister.

S: But all this happens due to an unjust social structure.
G: Yes, but none of the Yadavs chose the social structure. Since ages social reformers thought of designing and implementing a just social order. No such just social order has yet come to materialize. Society seems incapable of choosing a just social order, wars, fights, agitations, political campaigns and ideologies, and revolutions notwithstanding.
S: Then what is the utility of studying history, philosophy and economics? It is to make proper individual and social choices.
G: But all such choices are the result of so-called choices made earlier. All coices are chronologically bound by consistency. That we do not have a just social order is the result of the past choices by the society and the new ideas and pressures that happen to be generated. Today's driver Yadav or Minister Yadav are not what they are because of their choosing: they could not have chosen otherwise than becoming driver and minister respectively. Study of history, philosophy and economics explains how and why Yadav Driver and Yadav Minister are what they are today. Such studies are themselves knowledges that has been acquired by chance and not through independent free choice. Today's driver Yadav's grandson may become a politician and nminister decades later. It all depends on the stochastic destiny process. Today's driver Yadav has as much economic rationality as was possible for him at each moment of his time. His choice is bound by his initial conditions and the time path so far. He has no choice to be different. The socirty today has no choice to be different than what it is today.
S: But he can make choices that will make the future different.
G: Even there, his choices are determined by his past and the circumstances to which he has to react to. So, there is virtually no real choice or option for him make independently.