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How and Why Our Conventional Economic Thinking Causes Global Crises

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Thinking Ahead - Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society

Abstract

This discussion paper challenges a number of established views of mainstream economic thinking that, from the perspective of complexity science, seem to require a thorough revision. As Albert Einstein pointed out: “We cannot solve our problems with the same kind of thinking that created them.” Therefore, the new perspective offered here might help to identify new solutions to a number of old economic problems.

This chapter first appeared as FuturICT blog on April 8, 2013, see http://futurict.blogspot.de/2013/04/how-and-why-our-conventional-economic_8.html , and is reproduced here with minor stylistic improvements. An extended version has been published as a paper by Dirk Helbing and Alan Kirman (2013) Rethinking economics using complexity theory. Real-World Economics Review 64, see http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue64/HelbingKirman64.pdf .

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Further Reading

  1. D. Helbing, A. Kirman, Rethinking economics using complexity theory. Real-World Econ. Rev. 64, 23–52 (2013)

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  2. D. Helbing, S. Balietti, Fundamental and real-world challenges in economics. Sci. Cult. 76(9–10), 399–417 (2010)

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  3. D. Helbing, Accelerating scientific discovery by formulating grand scientific challenges. EPJ Special Top. 214, 41–48 (2012)

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  4. T.C. Grund, C. Waloszek, D. Helbing, How natural selection can create both self-and other-regarding preferences, and networked minds. Sci. Reports 3, 1480 (2013)

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  5. D. Helbing, Economics 2.0: the natural step towards a self-regulating, participatory market society. Evol. Institutional Econ. Rev. 10(1), 1–39, see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2267697 (2013)

  6. D. Helbing, A new kind of economy is born—social decision-makers beat the ‘homo economicus’, see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2332692 (2013)

  7. D. Helbing, Globally networked risks and how to respond. Nature 497, 51–59 (2013)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zürich, CLU E1, Computational Social Science, Claussiusstrasse 50, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Dirk Helbing

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  1. Dirk Helbing
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Correspondence to Dirk Helbing .

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Helbing, D. (2015). How and Why Our Conventional Economic Thinking Causes Global Crises. In: Thinking Ahead - Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15078-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15078-9_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15077-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15078-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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