First, to Matt’s report that a Google search reveals a
goodly number of printed references to the article I said had been
ignored. My principal response is: WOW! WHO KNEW?
Well, I would, if I ever bothered to read what other people
write. I knew about John Roemer, of
course, a super bright mathematically very sophisticated Marxist who wrote a reply
to my article at the time [well worth reading.]
But I had no idea anyone else had noticed it. Thank you, Matt. You have made an old man
happy.
About bitcoins. I
read up on them once but know next to nothing about them. The article linked to is great fun, and
basically correct about Marx. I
recommend it. Bitcoins raise very
interesting questions about the nature of money, a subject that interested me a
good deal for a while, and about which I wrote a lengthy and unsuccessful
analytical paper for my files [nothing I would ever want to share.] Early in my explorations of mathematical
economics, I noticed the curious fact that in General Equilibrium systems of
equations there did not seem to be any variable for money. I pointed this out to a UMass economics
graduate student who was taking the Mathematical Microeconomics course I was
sitting in on, and he looked at me as though I were an idiot and said, “But of
course not!” It struck me that a
super-sophisticated model of a capitalist economy with no place for money
probably had a few conceptual flaws, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
I'm glad to be of help! It's worth noting that, if anything, Google Scholar tends to under-count citations because it misses a lot of citations in books, so there are probably more than those listed. (It does sometimes give false positives, though I didn't notice any obvious ones when looking. My favorite such thing: one of my papers is reported to be cited in an article about swine farming. I really hoped that the citation was correct - I'd like to a make a contribution to such a cause! - but alas, the article in question was written before I was born, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually citing my work.)
ReplyDeleteSomething else to take pride in: _In Defense of Anarchism_ was included as one of the "Contemporary Classics in Political Theory" covered in the very recent _Oxford Handbook to Contemporary Classics in Political Theory_, edited by Jacob Levey, with a nicely done article by Anna Stilz. In my opinion Stilz is one of the very best "younger" political theorists working today, so having her write the article is a good treat. See here: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198717133.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198717133