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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: 1) by JavaDevGuy on Monday December 19 2016, @05:45PM
I cannot help but notice a couple of things about most of the replies to this article.
1) While people are decrying the state of the field of economics please be clear that the discussion is of Macro-economics not Micro-economics. Micro-economics and the study of the behavior of price has multiple mathematical models that hold up well to scrutiny when looking at a lot of industries. Modeling price demand to find elasticity of the price works so long as you have a fundamental understanding of the kind of market you are in.
2) If the state of economic mathematics and modeling is so poor why not start proposing solutions? Fundamentally it is a very important field as it is used to decide factors that impact all of our lives. All the more reason to understand the state of the field and work towards fixing the issues, to build robust models that stand up to scrutiny. In a world of metrics available everywhere, especially around consumer behavior and supply chains I have to ask why the models are so poor, the data is there. How can we ensure this data is available and used to form valid models that are not biased and that do help in design making?