Adam Martin on Things I've Said and What They Mean

|Peter Boettke|

My wife Rosemary just informed me about an hour ago that I blurt a lot of things out that make no sense and that I should think a bit more before I speak.  No doubt she is right. After initially disagreeing with her, upon reflection I realize she is 100% correct in her assessment in this particular case of foot insertion in mouth.  It turns out, again upon reflection, that she is right and not only for this particular case; I just have to grow up and admit it [Advice to the newly married men out there, the wife is always right!].

But this is hard to swallow for someone who makes their living through communication.  Both Rosemary and I are educators, and your goal as an educator is to communicate as effectively as you can the material you are teaching, and hopefully to inspire your students to delve deeper into the subject.  Rosemary's job has evolved over the years so that now she is mainly focused on encouraging a love of reading books and knowledge about how to use a library effectively for teachers and students alike.  My job is to encourage a love of economic argument and to get my students to think about the various ways they can use the economic way of thinking to address fundamental questions concerning social cooperation and human interaction in all walks of life.

This experience made me wonder, however, whether if in my teaching capacity I suffer from the same insert foot in mouth tendency.  In social settings, thankfully Rosemary is usually with me to minimize the damage.  But in the classroom I am left alone without the safety-net Rosemary provides.  At GMU, I am fortunate because many of my graduate students share a basic set of intellectual commitments which enables them to put the best interpretation on what I am saying (as opposed to an uncharitable interpretation which may in fact be possible if my words were repeated out of context).  Adam Martin has a working paper dealing with various aphorisms attributed to me from classes and seminars.  I think Adam does an amazing job in this paper of capturing what I am fond of saying and giving it a very charitable interpretation.

Thank you Adam!  You capture just what I wanted to say better than I could have articulated; every teacher should be so lucky.

Comments

[Pietro M.]

Lots of interesting and funny advices. My favourites:

“Do rational choice as if the choosers were human.”

“Saying that people respond to incentives doesn’t tell me anything unless you tell me how they understand those incentives.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘no theory,’ only inarticulate and undefended theories or
articulated and defended ones.”

“Become an input into others’ production functions.”

“Economics puts parameters on people’s utopias.”

[Liz Parker]

Wonderful paper :) Boettke, I'll always remember you as the professor who awakened my inner economist. Thank you for your continued inspiration!

[Nursing cover]

Nice post!...very nice personal experience story...yeah,its really true that wife is always right!

[Dave Prychitko]

Adam, fine piece of work.

One correction: "Don't get it right, get it written" is a lovely quote from the late great Kenneth Boulding.

Enjoyable!

[Kirk Dameron]

Great writing Adam. I found it personally helpful to have the list collected and briefly summarized as a synopsis of some of the useful things I learned in my year at GMU.