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from the how-bad-can-something-called-the-dismal-science-be? dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Economics affects us all, so why do so many remain ignorant of the fundamentals? Murray Rothbard said: "[I]t is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
Personally I'm tired of having to defend economics against both the mainstream advocates (with their broken models) and their critics (who tar economics with one brush). I take the time to educate myself and speak out, based on reason, not angry ignorance, and not on smugness, numerology, and appeals to the authority Lord Keynes.
There is a deep-seated tendency for people to misapply physical science techniques to the social sciences. This has resulted in mainstream economics degenerating into a modern day numerology. However there are intellectually sound schools of economics that do not attempt to treat human actions like Newtonian atoms.
This article from The Mises Institute discusses how and why mainstream economics has lost its way.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilPapa on Monday December 19 2016, @05:17AM
Economics has never been real science. It's always been nothing more than political agendas dressed as pseudo-science decorated with shoddy maths.
Parapsychology is currently more rigorous than Economics. I'm not joking. And I say this as maybe the only reader of SoylentNews that has actually attended a lecture by Milton Friedman. When he said that, "Economics is the study of scarcity", you could tell to whom he wanted that scarcity distributed.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 19 2016, @06:47AM
And I say this as maybe the only reader of SoylentNews that has actually attended a lecture by Milton Friedman.
Citation nee. . . . no, that would not even begin to cut it! How could you know this? And where is Milton buried? And why would anyone attend one of his lectures, unless extra credit was involved? I once attended a lecture by Nerō Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, but he was still full of it. I was not the only Soylentil in attendence. I leave it as an exercise to the reader the find the other(s).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by linuxrocks123 on Monday December 19 2016, @07:23AM
And where is Milton buried? And why would anyone attend one of his lectures, unless extra credit was involved? I once attended a lecture by Nerō Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, but he was still full of it.
Milton Friedman died in 2006, so it's perfectly believable that someone alive today attended one of his lectures. I know you're only 10, but some of us are older than that.
And if you're going to steal a time machine to listen to a Roman emperor from the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus would have been a much better choice.
Nero was a blowhard, foppish wannabe-poet. Claudius was an opinionated scholar-historian who wrote a treatise on a then-dead language (Etruscan), made a passionate case for adding letters to the Roman alphabet, and was politically sidelined for writing a truthful history of the overthrow of the Roman Republic while the guy who overthrew the Roman Republic (Octavian/"Augustus") was still emperor.
Then, when he was forcibly placed on the throne by a series of improbable events, he ruled justly, was a competent administrator, conducted an impressive and tactically well-planned expansion of Rome's territory, and invested heavily in well-chosen public works projects.
Dude was a geek who ruled one of the most powerful empires on Earth and ruled it well. Claudius was awesome.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Monday December 19 2016, @08:28AM
Ah, my nemesis, linuxrocks123, who has banned me and therefore never reads any of my comments . . . Oops!
Time machine? I was there! Not the best time I have ever had in Rome, but when you are almost 2400 years old, I suppose you have to expect some downers. And some wacko economic theories, like Moses von Mises and Alex Jones.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:02PM
You have so many nemeses, perhaps it would help if you weren't a skid mark on the boxers of humanity yourself.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 19 2016, @06:26PM
Almost all of my nemeses are nematodes, which why they never read my comments. Oh, what I would give for a worthy opponent! You know, some one capable of rational argument and not prone to playground insults. Seems all I get are ACs with potty training issues. Oh, well. We were talking about the mental disability know as "libertarianism" which seems to be what many mean by "libtard", or so I can only surmise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:41AM
Milton Friedman died in 2006, so it's perfectly believable that someone alive today attended one of his lectures.
You miss, as usual, aristarchus' point: it is the claim that he is the only soylentil that actually did so, not that he is somebody who did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @07:46AM
I agree it is a shoddy 'science'. The problem is the systems they build. Almost all of them work. Only however in a very particular set of conditions.
It is when those conditions are no longer met or the actual real system changes they have no clue. They actually do not model chaos very well at all.
They usually measure things with *very* *very* simple algebra and sometimes trigonometry. When they need to be using 20+ level deep calculus measuring change of a system over the range of variables as they change inside of a diff eq matrix. They try to shoehorn everything into a simple x/y grid when it is a multilevel dimensional thing.
Then even IF they could get the math right (which they have not). Then *only* if they could actually measure things properly. They have tons of made up things to measure with no proper way to actually measure them.
So when they model things everything goes sideways because they have no possible way to measure overall spending velocity anxiety for the average household or business. When that sort of thing is 'kinda constant' they can actually make some predictions. But when it starts moving around (for reasons they do not know) all of their formulas are garbage.
These dudes then make huge sweeping statements and write books that are bunk. Some political dudes actually take them seriously. Then those very plans meant to help people do the exact opposite. They honestly have no idea why. Because they do not actually understand the system at all.
How do I know this? When I was getting my degree in it as well as a math and comp sci degree not once did they show any calculus. Not once did they show how to map a surface into another one. Things they should have been doing. Instead we were doing simple linear algebra reductions and point slope intersections. To say the least I was bored to tears. None of the taught literature has it. Some of the more advanced guys have a hint of it. But many do not understand the system. They only understand parts of it. Economics does not have its own 'e=mc^2' moment yet. Micro econ and macro econ are two distinct fields of economics. Yet they do not have a real way to connect them. Much like special relativity and relativity. It all comes unglued quickly with little reason to as to why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:08AM
> "Economics is the study of scarcity"
That is one of the criticisms that the Austrian school levels against Friedmanites. Even if you don't like their school their criticism is spot on.
They hold that economics is the study of human action.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 19 2016, @07:33PM
Not being an economist, to me it looks as if economics is the study of a cross between game theory, psychology, and complexity theory. So it's not very surprising that no good theories exist. Any one of those is a tremendous problem to handle properly, and I don't think psychology has any valid models in-and-of itself, though it's making progress.
Here's an example of the depth of the problem: Program a computer to play go well without using neural networks (or any close analog). It's clearly possible, in theory, but it's also certain that nobody has been able to do it. And that's just game theory crossed with complexity theory. When you add the additional cross with psychology.... well, that conventional models don't succeed shouldn't be any surprise. Particularly when one of the elements of psychology is that people prefer simple theories that favor them over complicated theories that are more accurate.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.