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Can I recommend a book by the professor in Economics at Toulouse University, which deals precisely with these issues of a wider network around economics?

The Company of Strangers
. By Paul Seabright.

See for example This review
 (in French) which says the theme of the book is


(Comment la vie sociale est-elle possible ? Comment une telle organisation du travail, faisant dépendre de façon cruciale la vie de chacun d'étrangers distants, peut-elle fonctionner ? L'auteur nous convie donc à une histoire naturelle de la coopération humaine qui fait la vie économique et la spécificité de notre espèce..)


(How is social life possible ? How can such a pattern  of work organisation function, in which the life of each person is crucially dependent on distant strangers ? The author lays out for us a natural history of human co-operation which is made up of economic life and the specific characteristics of our species.) My translation - apologies for any infelicities.

One chapter deals approvingly with precisely the kind of enriching activities as the  socially active rural postal staff discussed here.

This book is definitely within the `Liberal Tradition' that gets so many sneering references on Eurotrib, but I suspect some will be surprised by its material and approach.

What do people here think?

by saugatojas on Sun Mar 25th, 2007 at 10:07:32 AM EST

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