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It is often opined here on Soylent that Economics isn't real science. You would expect economists to disagree with that sentiment, but it turns out that there is a growing international movement within the world of economics itself, started by a group of students, that seeks to drastically overhaul the entire field. Some choice quotes from the article, which is in fact a review of a book "which formalises and expands the case" that economics is in need of reform:
In the autumn of 2011, as the world's financial system lurched from crash to crisis, the authors of this book began, as undergraduates, to study economics. While their lectures took place at the University of Manchester the eurozone was in flames. The students' first term would last longer than the Greek government. Banks across the west were still on life support. And David Cameron was imposing on Britons year on year of swingeing spending cuts.
Yet the bushfires those teenagers saw raging each night on the news got barely a mention in the seminars they sat through, they say: the biggest economic catastrophe of our times "wasn't mentioned in our lectures and what we were learning didn't seem to have any relevance to understanding it", they write in The Econocracy. "We were memorising and regurgitating abstract economic models for multiple-choice exams."
Part of this book describes what happened next: how the economic crisis turned into a crisis of economics. It deserves a good account, since the activities of these Manchester students rank among the most startling protest movements of the decade.
After a year of being force-fed irrelevancies, say the students, they formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, with a sympathetic lecturer giving them evening classes on the events and perspectives they weren't being taught. They lobbied teachers for new modules, and when that didn't work, they mobilised hundreds of undergraduates to express their disappointment in the influential National Student Survey. The economics department ended up with the lowest score of any at the university: the professors had been told by their pupils that they could do better.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12 2017, @06:25PM
It wasn't incompetence it was malicious greedy intent.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday February 12 2017, @07:29PM
There is a lot of greed and malice involved, mostly by those doing the bidding of others who will one day pull out a chair for a cushy very well paying job.
However, in academia there is also incompetence involved in not calling them on it and discussing the massive failball with students.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 12 2017, @08:50PM
Exactly. I hear people throwing around names and theories but what it all comes down to is, those who fuck with the money are going to give the people with lots of money even more money at the expense of everybody else.
This is why we're now in its final form of madness -- infinite growth at all costs. And we're seeing its effects with the mass-invasion of filthy undesirables whose only contribution to society is their ability to breed recklessly.