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posted by janrinok on Sunday February 12 2017, @05:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the sir-can-do-better dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 13 2017, @01:35AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday February 13 2017, @01:35AM (#466403) Journal

    How about, if economics wants to be treated as a science, it obeys the laws of thermodynamics? Infinite growth in a finite universe, let alone a finite planet, is insanity.

    Economics is fundamentally the study of the problem of scarcity. In other words, it's the opposite of what you're talking about.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 13 2017, @04:02AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday February 13 2017, @04:02AM (#466441) Journal

    Yyyyyeah I'mma call bullshit on that one, sorry. After what I've seen "economics" used for in this country? Not buyin' it (so to speak). Or has economics become politicized?

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 13 2017, @12:44PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday February 13 2017, @12:44PM (#466551) Journal

      If you're the sort of person who questions the consensus of climate scientists, saying "the science isn't settled," or who hand-waves evolution away as just a "theory," then the sort of leap you're making is not large. I don't think you're that sort of person, so step back from making that leap and ask if you really think that, or if you're simply frustrated at the sclerotic state of modern capitalism. The latter is perfectly understandable. It's also not the fault of economics as a discipline or economists who do not take money from the lizard people to disguise their agenda.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:53PM (#468565)

      Has economics become politicized? Is that seriously a question? It would have to be obvious to anyone with even the simplest understanding of economics.