Rubin’s Emporiophobia

Abstract

Upon a request from the president of the southern economics association to a gathering of the Southern Economics Association for the members of the association to reduce their use of the word competition and replace it with what he considered to be the more apt term, cooperation, I had a mildly negative reaction to the notion and this article is a summary of that reaction, as it relates to individual wealth and the role of governments and corporations in the attainment of such wealth. Having enough wealth to participate in economic exchanges should inspire us to drill deeper on the definition of wealth before we are lured into opting for the definition imposed upon us by the culture in which we are bound. This article takes on that challenge of more defining wealth in a way that defies assumptions made by economists such as Rubin.