Source: EconLog
by Tyler Cowen
“An economic approach to Homer’s Odyssey is most definitely not about ‘what Homer really meant.’ Instead, the economic approach views Homer through a lens that Homer himself probably never entertained, namely a series of relatively simple models about preferences and constraints. The economic approach is thus a distortion, but perhaps a useful or interesting distortion. It is taking the richness of ideas, presentation, and narrative in Homer and remixing it. For all the complexity lost, this process induces us to engage in a certain kind of reductive prioritization as to how Homer wrote about human nature and politics, and thus it will bring out some elements of the story more than others.” (01/06/25)
https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2025/cowenodysseypart1.html