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The Essential James Buchanan (Essential Scholars) by [Donald J. Boudreaux, Randall G. Holcombe]

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Randall G. Holcombe

The Essential James Buchanan (Essential Scholars) Kindle Edition

by Donald J. Boudreaux (Author), Randall G. Holcombe (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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James (“Jim”) McGill Buchanan (1919-2013), surely seemed an unlikely prospect for winning a Nobel Prize in Economics when he was born in rural Tennessee on October 3rd.

Many of the works on Buchanan’s extensive list of publications stemmed from a single insight from early in his career: because neither the state nor society is a singular and sentient creature, a great deal of analytical and policy confusion is spawned by treating them as such. Collections of individuals cannot be fused or aggregated together into a super-individual about whom economists and political philosophers can usefully theorize in the same ways that they theorize about actual flesh-and-blood individuals.

Aggregative thinking lumps together a great many individuals into large categories such as “the nation” or “the government” and then treats each of these categories as if it is a unitary thinking, choosing, and acting individual. Under this approach, “the social welfare” is promoted by “the government,” with the latter treated as if it’s an organism possessing a brain, and as if that brain’s main interest lies not in serving itself but, rather, in serving the nation. Overlooked are the processes—all churning with assorted incentives and constraints—that lead individuals with diverse interests to undertake actions such as forming governments, becoming government officials, and dealing with government both as citizens who receive benefits from it and who incur costs to sustain it and to affect its activities.

From the very start, nearly all of Buchanan’s lifetime work was devoted to replacing this approach with the individualistic one—a way of doing economics and political science that insists that choices are made, and costs and benefits are experienced, only by individuals.

Buchanan believed deeply that each individual is morally equal to every other individual. Because no person is superior, ethically speaking, to any other person, no person’s opinions or preferences should be given special advantage over those of other persons. He believed that this conclusion holds fast despite the undeniable fact that some individuals are smarter, or better educated, or wealthier, or higher-born than others.

James Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986, and formally retired from the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1999, though he continued to conduct seminars for graduate students for several years afterward. And he continued to be a regular presence on campus until the very end. He died in Blacksburg, Virginia, after a brief illness, on January 9th, 2013, at the age of 93.

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81 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 26 2021
File size

629 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093MT9DJC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fraser Institute (April 26 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 629 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 81 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #140,927 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #78 in Economic Theory in Accounting & Finance
- #78 in Economic Theory (Kindle Store)
- #166 in Popular Economics (Kindle Store)

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Randall G. Holcombe

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Donald Farley

Review of James Buchanan's preferences in economic policies

Reviewed in Canada on May 17, 2021

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The two authors have done a credible job of passing along to a non-professional economist like me the major preferences of the famed U.S. economist James Buchanan (1919-2013). James Buchanan promoted individualism over notions of collectivism. He expounded the theme that government agencies and formal associations are non sentient creations that have no feelings or beliefs as compared to individuals. In promoting this belief he insisted on the importance of constitutional rules. The major functions of the state are protection from anarchy and provision of essential services which must be accomplished through agreed to constitutional rules.

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