Journeyism: A Handbook for Future Academics
The seeds of the needed foundation in the modern academy
Reviewed in Canada by Robert Henman on July 19, 2022
Journeyism’s relevancy is timely at a period in history when intelligent solutions to various world crises such as economics, climate change and escalating violence, are not forthcoming. The book lays out the process in a gradual manner aiding the reader to move forward with developmental insights towards a worldview grounded in one’s self-understanding. The book ends with a discussion of the need for the emergence of schemes of recurrence that will aid eventually in that historical intervention. A prime purpose is to shift the academy towards a form of functional collaboration that will yield cumulative and progressive results. Any academic seriously concerned with our global future will find in this book the seeds of the needed foundations to move forward in a progressive manner.
Economics Actually. Today and Tomorrow. Sustainable and Inclusive.
A timely introduction to business operations with various examples and detailed analyses.
Reviewed in Mexico by James Gerrard Duffy on April 10, 2020
The recent global Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the stock market and, in the U.S., lead to a record six million plus people filing for unemployment. Livelihoods are vulnerable and policymakers are debating what to do for households and small businesses to mitigate the impact. The shock is severe and pervasive, hitting not just households, and businesses small, medium, and large, but also financial institutions and markets all at the same time. Government officials are facing hard choices. How do they contain the virus and save lives without paying the price of severely slowing economic activity and risking a global recession?
Economics Actually is a provocative and insightful introduction to the economics piece of the puzzle, a puzzle that existed before the pandemic and will continue after a vaccine has been created and successfully tested. The puzzle is twofold. There is the task of seriously understanding how exchange economies actually operate. On the other hand, there is the massive collaborative task of defining and implementing glocal standards of living. The focus of this introductory book is primarily on understanding the ebbs and flows of the economy, though the authors do point to the larger challenge in the last section of the book.
Instead of adopting the models that pervade current schools of thought and accepting the dubious metric GDP, the authors offer a fresh start by asking a basic question: How does any particular business operate? The basic flaw with models is that they remain at several removes from actual exchanges. The basic events that need to be understood precisely and functionally are obvious to a grade school child: We eat berries, not the baskets used to collect the berries. There are two distinct needs that elicit two distinct types of work.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the authors offer a brief introduction, while in the second part they analyze businesses and financing. To get at the facts, they present various examples to draw out basic distinctions. Leuk is a lady who comes up with the idea of a “berry nest” to collect berries more efficiently. She and the other villagers realize that the two tasks—making baskets and collecting berries—are distinct. It also dawns on them that there will be a lag between a period of time spent producing baskets and a later period when berries will be collected more efficiently, thus increasing the amount of time to do something else besides collect berries. Clancy Builders is a contemporary business specializing in building family homes. QC painting was a small, seasonal business in Toronto, Canada. Niagara is a region of southern Ontario known for producing award-winning wines that are now exported to various countries.
In all cases and throughout the book, the focus is on empirical problems: Why are tasks divided? How do basic goods (berries) and services (house painting), as well as non-basic goods (nets) and services (building premises for businesses) actually flow? How do the two flows connect? How do the concomitant monies flow? Why do house building and house painting businesses direct part of their financial outlay towards the productive process and another part of their outlay towards replacement and maintenance? What are the roles of banks and other financial institutions? There are numerous citations in Economics Actually from Bernard Lonergan’s seminal work For a New Political Economy. In addition, the book sheds light on aspects of the work of Gregory Mankiw (whose Macroeconomics textbook is widely used), the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his collaborators, and the Austrian political economist and historian Joseph Schumpeter. The authors have clearly done their homework. That being said, this is an introductory book that is accessible to a wide audience. It’s “success” will depend on the time readers take to appropriate the examples, and indeed to reflect upon what is actually happening in the ebbs and flows of familiar businesses. The authors provide a needed introduction to what eventually needs to be implemented in communities and so, in particular, will need to be picked up by writers of textbooks, educators, journalists, economists, advisers, and policy makers alike.
That the muddled confusion of present economic theory has an explanation and a resolution.
Reviewed in Canada by Robert Henman on March 29, 2020
Quinn and Benton provide an accessible read to Bernard Lonergan’s circulation analysis, an analysis that has been ignored by economists for decades. For economists, students of economics or anyone interested in the origins of global disparity, corporate behaviour or government policy on economics, this book gets to the heart of the matter, there is a need for a science of economics. Quinn and Benton, drawing on the work of Bernard Lonergan and Philip McShane point us in the direction of an explanatory science of economics, something present economist cannot do leaving politicians, students and the social commune at their mindless mercy.
Journeyism’s relevancy is timely at a period in history when intelligent solutions to various world crises such as economics, climate change and escalating violence, are not forthcoming. The book lays out the process in a gradual manner aiding the reader to move forward with developmental insights towards a worldview grounded in one’s self-understanding. The book ends with a discussion of the need for the emergence of schemes of recurrence that will aid eventually in that historical intervention. A prime purpose is to shift the academy towards a form of functional collaboration that will yield cumulative and progressive results. Any academic seriously concerned with our global future will find in this book the seeds of the needed foundations to move forward in a progressive manner.