IF AN ECONOMIST

 
It is hard to reconcile the paradoxical nature of the present. The sun is out in Johannesburg. South Africa is playing India in a cricket test match. This is my preferred sense of normality. The game represents the ebb and flow of form and fortune between ball and bat that decides the outcome. The ball could be considered the logos. Obviously without it there is no game but cricket is all about how it is manipulated to do this or that thing that has an effect on the outcome. The complexities in explaning it goes beyond a mortal writer.

A good batsman is not someone who just hits the ball hard. He must also know how to adjust his shots to the height of the bounce, not only but also to read the delivery lines and the uneven bounce off the pitch. When you know you are out because the ball has snicked very lightly the bat, the ball has been caught but the umpire can't tell whether you've snicked it and you stand your ground, you've entered into a Dostoyevskian ethical dilemma.

What is a thing worth? What is the right amount to spend on a building? What is the building for? What if it were just for the hell of it? If there is no lucrative motive than there can only be one other motive for building; for religious reasons.

If an economist wrote a book, at bottom, it would be about desire: the desire to supply and the desire to demand on one hand, supplying the desire and demanding the desire on the other.