"I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are"
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Stiglitz is doing something sneakily radical here: he’s recasting “going abroad” not as personal enrichment but as an epistemic weapon against complacency. The line hinges on a simple psychological claim with big political implications: familiarity isn’t just comfort, it’s anesthetic. When you grow up inside a particular economic order, you stop seeing it as a set of choices and start treating it as nature. Prices, wages, inequality, even the shape of “normal” opportunity become background noise.
The phrasing matters. “Crystallize issues” suggests that the problems weren’t absent before; they were diffuse, easy to rationalize away, kept fuzzy by routine. Encountering an economy “quite different” forces comparison, and comparison forces causality. If another country organizes healthcare, labor rights, banking, education, or industrial policy differently - and still functions - then the myth that “there is no alternative” collapses. Stiglitz’s subtext is anti-fatalistic: markets don’t just happen; they are designed, regulated, and narrated into legitimacy.
Contextually, this is classic Stiglitz: the Nobel economist who made a career out of pointing at the scaffolding hidden behind “free market” rhetoric - information asymmetries, institutional power, and policy choices that winners prefer to call inevitabilities. He’s also implicitly critiquing a parochial strain in economic thinking, especially in the U.S., where models often smuggle local norms in as universal laws. The quiet punchline: travel doesn’t broaden the mind because cultures are charming; it broadens the mind because it reveals how much of what you were told was “just economics” was actually politics.
The phrasing matters. “Crystallize issues” suggests that the problems weren’t absent before; they were diffuse, easy to rationalize away, kept fuzzy by routine. Encountering an economy “quite different” forces comparison, and comparison forces causality. If another country organizes healthcare, labor rights, banking, education, or industrial policy differently - and still functions - then the myth that “there is no alternative” collapses. Stiglitz’s subtext is anti-fatalistic: markets don’t just happen; they are designed, regulated, and narrated into legitimacy.
Contextually, this is classic Stiglitz: the Nobel economist who made a career out of pointing at the scaffolding hidden behind “free market” rhetoric - information asymmetries, institutional power, and policy choices that winners prefer to call inevitabilities. He’s also implicitly critiquing a parochial strain in economic thinking, especially in the U.S., where models often smuggle local norms in as universal laws. The quiet punchline: travel doesn’t broaden the mind because cultures are charming; it broadens the mind because it reveals how much of what you were told was “just economics” was actually politics.
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| Topic | Learning |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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