I’m still trying to learn economics, but I’m watching/listening university lectures, podcasts, interviews etc and this field is so stagnant it’s ridiculous. Important professors asked to analyze current crises just sit around arguing about whether Keynes or Hayek were in favor of government intervention in 1932. Or other critical current topics.
Dudes. Dudes. Come on.
And if you’ve lived through austerity policies: this is 100% the fault of economics. And they are 100% fandom/model based.
This field is almost exclusively fundamentalistic. And a tiny bit of dictatorship and/or suffering is broadly considered the Right Path to some fucked up nirvana.
There is hardly any data, and when there is it’s often so cherry picked it’s embarrassing. They will gladly take credit for effects years into the future, but zero responsibility for crashing an economy.
@Patricia how is there hardly any data??? in today's world we are fucking flooded with data
wtf??
@ShadowJonathan you’d think. But I have this nice formal model (high school math formula) and an ideology based in a dude who lived a century ago.
@Patricia god
I'd somewhat have expected economics to be very advanced rn but simply be beaten by complex real world situations
But it has hardly progressed???
The fuck??
@ShadowJonathan where most social sciences developed their fields to study the real world and embrace its complexity, economics decided that they could model the real world with very simple math based on ridiculously unreasonable assumptions and zero data. They just sit around and think about stuff. They think it’s science, but there is no experiments, no testing of hypothesis, it’s literally a pseudoscience.
@Patricia even if they think that they can attempt to model (parts of) the real world with math, all of those models are only small parts of a complex interacting system, socially, politically, and economically
Just... ???? Ah yes, I have reduced countless irl NP-hard problems to a simple math function, oopsie daisey if it causes an economy crash or two, ignore how it doesn't account for people living or dying
Just, urgh
@Patricia is the simple model stuff only because they can all agree on a simple model, and are all just throwing their large models into the aether, with no way to verify or legitimise them?
@ShadowJonathan it’s even sadder than that, it’s all based on “Methodological individualism” they don’t consider the economy a complex system, instead they start with the an individual stylized person “Homo economicus” and then everything builds from that.
@Patricia oh they are still on THAT shit? When it has been proven again and again that a person is NOT transactional, maximally selfish, and instead actually has emotions, and does not spend its entire day sussing out economic factors with maximum precision?
Please, please tell me there's some mold breaker here, and that this isn't the avant garde state of economics, since... holy Jesus mother fuck
@ShadowJonathan their entire field is based on this. The only option would be to trash it, so they ignore it.
@Patricia ...*really??*
When I think of "economics" as a field, I actually think of the modelling of *businesses* more than the modelling of *people*
Businesses are much closer to that maximally efficient economic entity than what humans really are, and so I imagine a field more about how businesses exploit resources, maybe something about the interaction of shareholders and the drive for ROI
...but everything still only being based around the individual? When that has been proven in social fields that it's bogus?
Urghhhhhhhhhh
@ShadowJonathan sorry to say it, but it seems like our mutual friend @Patricia is trapped in an outdated idea about economics, kept alive by Russian propaganda. Everything changed after the 2008 financial crisis, when the last holdouts of neoliberalism was discredited.
@ShadowJonathan The international financial community, The world bank, IMF, G7, and IBS, has all moved passed these outdated ideas. Some notebale holdouts are The UK (until labour took over), and Russia. Other then that it's mostly soggy old professors that setup their teaching plan in the 80's.
@ekg @ShadowJonathan
I really can't follow your argument.
How did all these institutions move past neo liberalism? Privatisation is still seen as "the silver bullet" investment by state are den at bad. I really can't follow your argument. It sounds like propaganda
@realn2s @ShadowJonathan to be fair it's propaganda.
Have you read anything directly from these institution in awhile?, the change over started after 2008 financial crisis, but it's not fully formed yet. But you can clearly read a much more considerate approach these days, a huge change in how they think has occurred. Barack Obama was the last major neoliberal world leader. Unless you count Merkel or Putin. I guess Macron could be seen as neoliberal as well.
@ShadowJonathan @realn2s yeah, absolutely. It just that anyone that start their campaign now, and hire competent people, will be told beyond all doubt that neoliberalism is dead.
Imagine a world leader on a neoliberal campaign is as crazy to me as having one run on replacing NASA with astrologist.
@ekg @ShadowJonathan
You trust your claim again and again. Can you provide any pointer backing them up.
I see the ugly face of neoliberalism alive and kicking in Germany with the FDP finance minister opposing spending on infrastructure and renewable energy.
UK even with Labour (might change), Argentina, ...
And here is an article from 2021 discussing the austerity measures the IMF still enforced
https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2021/04/05/imf-austerity-is-alive-and-impacting-poverty-and-inequality/
While the IMF might have changed their retoric they didn't change their actions
@realn2s yeah Argentina is an interesting exempel. I was specifically talking about the leaders in the field of economics, not politician and policymakers. Policy is reliable well behind subject matter expert, except when subject matter expert makes policy.
@realn2s labour is actually quite open about breaking with the disastrous past of austerity, they are however facing a tough financing position. The fundamental problem of financing a country is that you must present your policies in an way that is perceived as credible to foreign finansieras, that's why they have to wait until the budget statement this autumn and get the office of budget responsibility to sign of.
@realn2s the failure to get the office of budget responsibility to sign of was the whole cause of the Liz Truss crisis.
@ekg @realn2s "last" implies that there wont be any more of them, but im not too sure about that
populism seems to be popular nowadays, but idk what'll come after that