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posted by on Monday December 19 2016, @03:13AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:08AM (#443004)

    > "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

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 19 2016, @07:33PM (#443277) Journal

    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.

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