Contra-Economics

Stephen Winter says a lot of nice things about Idiosophy over at Wisdom from the Lord of the Rings this week.

One thing I’d like to clarify: In case anyone concluded that the disjunctions in time in Middle-earth are a weakness in the story, I think they’re intentional. When Tolkien wanted his creation to resemble our world, he was careful to make sure his facts were correct. We have seen this in astronomy, botany, cosmology, ecology, and even in quantum physics.

But if there’s one discipline Tolkien didn’t respect, it’s economics. He went out of his way to break economic laws. The logic of economics is the logic of the Industrial Revolution, and Middle-earth was going to have none of it. So The Shire and Bree have money, but no government that coins it. The places with the most advanced technology are the ones with the lowest population density. Fast technological development in Isengard is the product of one single mind, not a collaborative community. All of these things contradict well-established economic theorems.

The one place I can think of where economic logic applies is in Lake Town. The stories people tell about the King Under the Mountain are a good application of Keynesian macroeconomics, but we readers are not encouraged to think of the Master and his guild-inspired community leaders as heroes.

That, I think, is the purpose of the steep time-gradients on the map of Middle-earth — to renounce Adam Smith and all his works. Faërie and Economics are natural enemies.