"Assume a can opener" is a catchphrase used to mock economists and other theorists who base their conclusions on unjustified or oversimplified assumptions.[1][2]
The phrase derives from a joke which dates to at least 1970 and possibly originated with British economists.[3] The first book mentioning it is likely Economics as a Science (1970) by Kenneth E. Boulding:[4]
There is a story that has been going around about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist who were stranded on a desert island with no implements and a can of food. The physicist and the chemist each devised an ingenious mechanism for getting the can open; the economist merely said, "Assume we have a can opener"!
The phrase was popularized in a 1981 book and has become sufficiently well known that many writers on economic topics use it as a catchphrase without further explanation.[5][6]
Examples of usage
The joke and its application to economists were taken up in the 1981 book Paper Money by George Goodman (under the pseudonym "Adam Smith"),[7] wherein he applied the story to the then-tendency of economists to assume that inflation would go away, and mocked the notion that economists are "the high priests of this esoteric mystery."[8] In contrast, he asks "why the economists are always wrong."[9] The phrase "assume a can opener" became "his nagging accusation against the deductive logic and analytical models of economists."[10]
US President Ronald Reagan told the joke to students and faculty at Purdue University on April 9, 1987.[11]
Italian finance minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa used the phrase in 2006 to illustrate that "Very often, when economists comment, they assume politics away."[12] It has been used in Australia to describe "a treasurer who has lost all touch with reality"[13] and politicians "assuming away" the problem of getting a global greenhouse gas deal.[14] It was used in India to describe American economic policy toward China.[15]
It has been extended beyond economics to describe diplomats and negotiators working toward peace in the Middle East, who have been described as behaving "as if the conflict were just a big misunderstanding" and "[assuming] leaders who did not exist, as a way to conjure a preferable reality."[16]
↑ May, Cliff (February 17, 2009). "Peace Processing 101". Gettysburg Times. Retrieved March 18, 2013.
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