5 August

More of the genius of Tarde. What would Tarde say we should do to get 'economic growth'? Tax cuts? Micro- and macro-economic reform? Fiscal or competition reform? All fairytale piffle, he'd have said. There is no economy, there are just people's desires interacting in different ways. For Tarde there's only one way to boost economic growth - people having conversations, processing their desires. The 'market' or 'the economy' are just big conversations. (He'd have seen social media as the greatest economic innovation in world history.) "There is no economic relationship between men that is not first accompanied by an exchange of words, whether verbal, written, printed, telegraphed, or telephoned...how do these needs for production and consumption...arise? Most often, thanks again to conversations, which has spread the idea of a new product to buy or to produce from one interlocutor to another...If, just for one week, conversation ceased in Paris, it would show very quickly through the singular decrease in the number of sales in stores...There is no...factor more powerful...in production than the chatter of individuals in their idle hours."