Iain Morris 

I Spend Therefore I Am review – the true cost of economics

Philip Roscoe's critique of the "pernicious" intrusion of economics into everyday life is compelling, writes Iain Morris
  
  

Philip Roscoe, books
Philip Roscoe bemoans the presence of algorithms in education and healthcare. Photograph: Alamy Photograph: Alamy

Philip Roscoe's book appears to join a growing pantheon of popular literature on economics that attests to the creeping influence of this most imprecise science, and includes the likes of Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist and Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. But while those authors are happy to see all facets of life through an economic lens, Roscoe believes the steady intrusion of economics into our daily affairs is pernicious and that we should be looking for alternatives to an economics-based worldview. Roscoe makes a convincing case for the way economics has commodified and devalued aspects of our lives that should be governed by other considerations. Ranking tables and cost-benefit algorithms, for example, have become de facto in education and healthcare; online dating substitutes a calculated, pseudoscientific approach to finding the "right" partner for the spontaneity of a serendipitous encounter. Economics is only this influential, economists would retort, because the "market" it seeks to explain reflects a natural order based on the immutable truth of human self-interest. Yet Roscoe skilfully deconstructs this notion, exposing the flawed assumptions in the economic theories of some respected thinkers. He gives us a fresh and incisive critique of a doctrine still shaping our society.

 

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