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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: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 19 2016, @08:30PM
While I mostly agree with your qualifiers, I can't say that I agree with your characterization of the Mises folks as coming out of Positivism. To the contrary, the link I noted in my previous post from the Mises website explicitly rejects Positivism, embraces (Continental) Rationalism, and views empiricism (British or otherwise) as fundamentally limited and unable to address the types of economic and political questions the Mises folks want to claim to answer.
I'm NOT saying all followers of Mises necessarily agree with this perspective, and some of them are indeed more in the Positivist tradition. But the essay I linked isn't the only place among Mises materials that I've seen explicit rejections of empiricism and an embrace of old-school rationalist epistemologies.
(Score: 1) by segwonk on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:43AM
Apologies: Off topic.
Just wanted to say to both you, AthanasiusKircher, and aristarchus - I really appreciate your insightful, informative and above all, civilized posts. I look forward to reading SN to see what I can learn for the day. Thank you so much! [Of course there are many other contributors I enjoy as well, but I was inspired to say something now for some reason.]
.......go til ya know.