Four More Years of Economics #9 and #10: Homo Bulla – The ethics and aesthetics of failure, and after the Jungle – Murder mystery an economics and performance letter-writing project

Abstract

Homo Bulla—the ethics and aesthetics of failure and After the Jungle—murder mystery …..An economics and performance letter-writing project

This particular piece, written specifically in response to the invitation to contribute to this collection, is the latest in the series of economics letters that Matthew Goulish and Abhay Ghiara regularly write to each other as part of their Year of Economics writing project.

Matthew starts off his letter with a description of some aspects of his Ethics and Aesthetics of Failure course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The writing moves organically through Shinto practices at the Ise shrine, the idea of ephemerality, student assignments and responses, the tulip market crash of the seventeenth century, the one-minute sculptures of Erwin Wurm, all held together by the metaphor of the bubble. As usual, Matthew's letter ends with an economics challenge question for Abhay.

Abhay responds with a loosely connected 26 part response that meanders through personal narrative, the holy tank of Banganga in old Bombay, Durga, the Hindu goddess who rides a tiger, how man-eating tigers or maneaters are created, how bubbles are the ideal form of economic system, all held together with the economics of the housing crisis and the credit market bubble and their Wurmian lessons for the economics student. Abhay ends his letter by introducing a new concept of value. He calls it dignity value.