The Return Of Natural-Law Economics
October 19, 2002

John D. Mueller

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that "the Americans can be relied upon to do the right thing, after exhausting the alternatives." I hold a similar tempered optimism about the economics profession, with which have been associated by occupation for more than 20 years. Historically, economic theory originated in the happy union of Athens and Jerusalem known as "the natural law," and has always returned to the sanity of its roots-after exhausting the alternatives. As I read its history, economic theory has nearly completed its last great detour away from sanity, and is rapidly running out of alternatives to a renewal of "natural-law economics." If such a renewal occurs, it won't be because economists have decided to sit down and learn from philosophers (or, God forbid, theologians)-nothing could be farther from their minds-but for the same reason as the last seismic shift in economics, which began in the 1870s: a growing number of economists are finding the current state of economic theory a professional embarrassment. Of course, I may be underestimating the average economist's threshold of embarrassment. But let me explain the nature of that embarrassment, why only a renewed "natural law economics" will relieve it, and why non-economists should care.


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