My Love for Social Economics / NSHE’s Mike Reed, Plus! Myrna’s gone Bonkers…er…Got Her New Blog On!

By David LaPlante • on September 17, 2007

So Myrna has a new look to her Blog. Cool! Loving that Reno’s #1 blogger dug-in and upgraded. Reno and its Discontents got a makeover over the weekend and it’s lookin’ great! Blog redesign can kill a person (or pay the bills for some, wink)…or at least drive you ”absolutely bonkers” which is what I think drove Myrna to write a post on economics.

Her post “On Capitalism” got me thinking about how much I enjoy social and political economic theory and why. Myrna asks the question:

“Come on, is there anyone out there who can tell me with a straight face that Milton Friedman or Karl Marx or John Keynes didn?t have certain agendas in mind while formulating their theories?”

Rather than give a straight answer (yes, I have a BS in Economics AND a BS in Finance, emphasis on “BS” hahaha), here’s a little story about where my passion came from:

When I showed up to UNR in 1988, I intended to be a Finance Major w/ Political Science and Marketing Minors. I wanted to go to law school then. Yeah…anyway…probably should have stuck with that plan, BUT:

mikereed My adviser was Mike Reed — a social economics professor then. Mike later went on to become Dean of the College of Business and is now basically the CFO for the Nevada System of Higher Education. He works for Jim Rogers & Crew now. What kind of sillyness he must witness in the name of education one can only imagine…but I’m jealous!

Because of Mike Reed I dumped my minors and ended up taking all of his classes, and incidentally, pretty much every one of his “arch enemy” Tom Cargill’s as well (who is a hidden UNR treasure). They weren’t actually enemy’s. I just like to think so. Cargill had a different approach. He’s a banking economist who I think predicted/nailed the whole EU unification/outcome in 1991 with an intense decade crystal ball accuracy… Smart dude, anyway…

There’s simply no better person to have a drink with in all of Nevada and have a conversation about economics and the social/political conundrum than Dr. Mike Reed. A hippie. A beatnik. A redneck. A artisan. A philosopher. An economist. A real human being. He’s the kind of social chameleon that makes him great at everything. Not only can he slide comfortably in to every social-economics conversation and actually ADD to it, he can — and will – challenge every belief you hold until you have no choice but to find empathy and a understanding of all perspectives. I’ve seen the most virulent of socialists tamed in to respect for Smith/Hayek. Conversely, he beat the Ayn Rand right out of me, while simultaneously introducing me to Ludwig von Mises v. Keynes, and then doubled-back with Schumpeter (hence my Entrepreneur bent). Then, just when I was all puffed up, he slipped in Marx, Kant, Hegel and Rousseau. (Ayn still tops in the book favs tho’.)

Yes Myrna, every economist has an agenda – visible, hidden, obfuscated or even more often subconscious. But we all do!

We all have agendas. We all have different worldviews. The greatest thing about Mike’s approach towards teaching economics was to encourage his students to discover these “worldviews” and navigate in-and-around them in understanding what made their approach tick, click or sick. BTW, agenda sounds evil – all these people were well intentioned passionate people deeply vested in trying to understand the world about them to the benefit of everyone…folks like Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Stalin, Che, Hitler, Castro, Chavez, Peron hacked certain economic theories for their impassioned Maslow-political marketing/branding strategy a.k.a. “an agenda”.

Because of Mike’s passion for his students, I was fortunate to be able to see Milton Friedman — not once…but twice before he passed away.

Anyway, Myrna’s post reminded me of how much value I got from my education as a result of Mike Reed’s meddling with my mind…and how lucky I am to have meet and see speak one of the great economists of our time. Speaking of (future) great economists…Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and Curator of TED and writer/creator of the Long Tail is still quite young/alive/kicking and just may be a recent example of great economic mind of our time…go see him speak before he dies in a WordPress makeover!

I personally think Clay Shirky is a potential great mind to be appreciated and agendacided…Robb Smith has a great post here on Clay Shirky. Clay’s Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags is a must read for ANY BLOGGER that is participating/creating/benefiting from the Web 2.0 economy. In fact, “Part I: Classification and its Discontents” sounds awfully familiar… hahahahah!

A note from the Adam Smith wiki worth digressing on:

On June 25, 2006, when Warren Buffet announced that he would donate his wealth to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he was presented with a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations by Bill Gates.^[12]

So, the two people that are most often maligned for being Capitalists donated 33 Billion buckaroos (now a 65B portfolio) to solve a lot of world ilk. Can anyone with a straight face tell me that whatever they’re 33 Billion dollars goes to, it doesn’t have an agenda too? That’s 64.9999999999999999Billion more than I have to help people out!

Anyway, When Mike Reed introduced Warren Buffet to UNR students celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the COBA, I couldn’t help but think that Mike Reed and Warren Buffet were two intellectual giants/peas-in-a-pod on stage. While Warren Buffet talked about how important people are to business and organizations and the empathy/ethics required to steward any organization, I realized I was fortunate to have experienced that philosophy first hand from Mike starting in 1988.

Thanks Myrna for finally triggering a post outta me!