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: 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 NerÅ 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.