Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:11PM (#443297)

    Thanks for that Phoenix666.

    Economics is about creating models (typically with lots of Greek letters and Lagrangian optimization under constraint). It's also about testing the models empirically using stats and p-values and Beta coefficients. I'm not saying that economics cannot err, or be abused deliberately. What I say is that it contains what it needs to self-correct with new facts and smarter models; it progresses like any other science in a Khunian or Lakatoshian way.

    Although I'm certainly not against heterodox methods in social sciences, what is presented in the submission is junk nonsense from charcoal-funded propagandists; They say nothing, except linking to their propaganda website. That's an ignorance-based evangelization campaign.

    -An actual economist