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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: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday December 19 2016, @11:30AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday December 19 2016, @11:30AM (#443069) Journal

    It's important to differentiate economics, as a discipline studied in universities, and economics as a buzzword used in media and government. The first does follow the scientific method. It observes a system, makes predictions, and refines models based on its observations of the changes to the system. The latter cherry picks ideas (often ones discredited decades ago based on observation of the real world), wraps them up in ideology, and then uses them to form policy.

    It is incredibly rare for someone introduced as an economist on television or in other news sources to actually be a practicing economics researcher. At best, they're someone who got a PhD in economics and then went off to work in a bank for a few decades.

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