Topic: Economic Idiocy (Read 4345 times)

We both qualified our statements:

I used the term "honest" economists, and you used the term "mainstream" economists, i.e., we both used "some" economists.

I replied to the comment that "economists think they know anything when their theories are so useless and almost always wrong. Modern economics are more like sports commentary or religion than a science," which simply isn't true.

The honest economists are getting away from mathematical models in some senses, because no model can realistically handle the trillions upon trillions of decisions people make each day, and then aggregate that into some prediction of the future. Using principles instead of mathematics can give a better idea of human choice, but still will never be perfect.

Science: given a choice between two identical items, people will always choose the cheaper one. Every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. That is a theory, it makes predictions, and has been proven over and over and over.

+1

This thread had no apparent reason to exist, other than for OP to call all responders idiots.

One good example: "2% inflation a year is good for the economy" every mainstream economist will spout this but I have NEVER heard them cite a single study, they just pulled it out of their ass.

- Why 2% and not 0.5%, 2.5%, 3% or 10%?
- Typical justfications are "deflation is BAAD" or "keeps people employed", which may or may not be true, but you can't SAY stuff like that without some hard goddamn evidence.

Another good example is often they will cite a SINGLE data point and use it to justify insanely wide generalizations - examples that they often get wrong too:

- The great depression was caused by a bunch of bad investments that collapsed, this caused people to pull out their money and the value of money rose temporarily. Economists will often blame the deflation rather than the actual down to earth cause of bad investments.
This is by the way their ONLY example of why deflation is bad - and its wrong.

Finally science is actual a VERY simple protocol and economists do simply NOT follow it:

- Positivism is the core methodology behind science, without it you are simply not doing science.
- It states that a theory should be logically self consistent (ie if 2+2 equals 4 on mondays it should do so aswell on tuesdays, unless the theory specifies otherwise of course) AND a theory must be disprovable.
- So: 1. Make a theory. 2. Make a prediction (it can be statistical). 3. Test if true. I have NEVER heard of an economist theory developed or tested like this and hence per DEFINITION economics is NOT a science.
- You can see this often in the excuses economists make up on the fly as they are wrong again and again - it sounds a lot like religious people justifying their beliefs with weird exceptions and phrases.

Bonus stuff:
- Complete failure to include the physical world in their calculations, acording to economic theory you would probably have a swell economy if you had 2% inflation a year even if all energy sources in the world suddenly disappeared or "demand" would magically materialize the disappeared/used up energy.

- Complete amateurs often make better predictions, I remember Resilience.org documented a significant correlation between energy (oil) consumption and economic activity - wheras economic theory would make you believe energy prices should crash at increased supply.
They also showed that if economists idea of infinite growth held true, the planet surface would BOIL in 1-200 years from simply the activity going on (not global warming).

- I recently heard an economist say that economists assume 100% employment OVER TIME... and I could not believe how stupid it was.. its been millenia and hello not everyone is employed! There are COSTS to employing people and the retarded, handicapped and unwilling will NEVER be employed.

- I could literally just keep going.

Don't worry about it. The fact remains that green pieces of paper remain mankind's best alternative to violent intent.

True. I try to avoid using the term "money" but I don't always remember.

Economics is the mathematical mapping of intent. It has nothing to do with money, exclusively. It quantifies that which can be theoretically counted, but no methods exist of yet to count it.

Everything in the field after that is showmanship, like a hobbyist in rocketry trying to impress a crowd more than a particle physicist.

Here we go:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/31/5260534/krugman-bitcoin-evil-economists

"'To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value,' Krugman writes. He isn’t convinced that Bitcoin is a good medium of exchange, but it’s the store of value question where Bitcoiners think very differently from economists. In Krugman’s mind, a currency that is a reliable store of value is traditionally either backed by a central authority willing to buy back the currency, the way the dollar is backed by the Treasury, or it has some intrinsic value, the way gold can be made into jewelry. If a currency has no central authority and no intrinsic value, people can’t trust that it will retain value over time."

Good ole Paulsy. What he actually hates is that individuals control it with near impunity, and don't have to do what he thinks that the gov't should force people to do.

Also, the author wheezes:

"There are countless possible deaths of Bitcoin. The technology fails. Overspeculation causes an irrecoverable crash. The price never settles down. Deflationary pressure annihilates liquidity. A government shuts it down. A new currency makes it obsolete. Users abandon it for some other reason. And so on."

Wow. Brilliant analysis. You mean, every other new thing that ever comes to market never has to fight against nearly insurmountable odds? The odds are against ANYTHING surviving long term, EVERYTHING new has to face "countless possible deaths." Duh. OHMYGODDON'TYOUDAREUSEAWALKMANOVERTHELONGTERMBECAUSETHEREARECOUNTLESSPOSSIBLEDEATHSOFWALKM ANS!!! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! WONTSOMEBODYPLEEEEEEEZETHINKOFTHECHILDREN???!!!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/31/5260534/krugman-bitcoin-evil-economists

I'm happy we live in a world where we can easily get such information; if it's true what is said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," then it seems the one thing we've been missing is a consistent and universal record of the past and present available to all people, so much so that "I didn't know" is no longer a valid excuse.

You should read about all the same BS stunts that they pulled in ancient Rome. And nearly everywhere else, ever since. Pretty much the same stupid mistakes, continuously.

Well, if that's what you see, I am THRILLED that I do not have your eyesight. Actually, I'm a US attorney with an LL.M in Corporate and Securities Law from the London School of Economics, I didn't want a full on Econ degree.

Every point I've made her actually *does* apply to the BTC world, because I'm commenting on the principles involved. People will make their own BTC choices, just as they do with fiat currencies. That is true, on its face.

If I made some appeal to authority fallacy, you'd have to quote me. I haven't. I have said that many people have a lot to learn--I did not say posit that they should listen to me, Paulsy Krugman, or anyone else.

Sadly, I think you must have some basis in economics. Most simply, because at some level "economics" is a euphemism for "my personal worldview that is soooo important to me that I will doublethink before I will face evidence conflicting with what I want to be true."

Let's hope you're right!

MOE: Uh, why don't you invite him over to dinner. Turn him from an enemy to a friend. Then when he's not expecting it... bam! The old fork in the eye.

HOMER: Do you think it might work, ~without~ the fork in the eye?

MOE: There's always a first time.

I like your post. All I would say is that who the hell cares if their models work or not? For the most part, every single model that every single economist ever made could be wrong. So what?

The issue becomes a problem when gov't uses law based on those idiotic models to force everyone to pay for nuclear weapons, "free" healthcare, wars, Social Security, et cetera. THAT is when the models are always wrong, and that is when we get skrewed.

Brilliant! Well played, Sir.

More accurately "...none of which that (you) know of work very well."

There, fixed that for you.

The answer to this is to look at the principles involved in human behaviour, of which I noted one: all else being equal, people make the best choice for them at the time the choice is made. Most simply: people respond to incentives.

I cannot comment on corporate economists much (I know full well why they do what they do), but I certainly know that gov't economists, academic economists, and the Paulsy Krugman-types certainly lose sight of this fact. I'm somewhat shocked that they still think they can model the aggregate outcomes of hundreds of trillions of individual decisions made every day.

Frankly, I'm not really sure why "we" (whoever that is), needs the outcome of their models.

Zinggggggg!

That is simply untrue, every single person on earth uses economics in real life with every decision they make: they ALWAYS choose what they think at that moment will make their lives better with the information they have at hand. But you are right here: it IS in "the eye of the beholder". That can mean gold vs. silver, BTC vs. LTC, BigMac vs. Big King. That can alson mean a lesser of evils choice. That can mean a sacrifice to help someone else. That can mean they choose/chose poorly. That can mean nearly any outcome, e.g., silver, LTC, Big King, medicine over food, feeding someone else before themselves, whatever the choice they make, they choose to make their lives better than every single one of the alternative choices, even if the difference is nearly negligible.

This is why they all understand it at a gut level. This is why even the homeless wino doesn't stand in the middle of a abandoned missile silo site in Nebraska begging for money--he stands at the busiest intersection he can in the busiest city he can because he knows that he stands to make far more money at the corner of Michigan and Lake than he does there way outside of Lincoln, Nebraska.

You're right, and I understand that. There is a small part of me that hopes (my own idiocy right there) this might somehow change.

I would only like to say that you don't have to know such Schools to predict some event future etc. because thay can be all proven wrong like all theories. Ofc you can benefit from understanding of such things, but truth is everything we know can change in one day (and i'm not speaking only about economics).

It's like when i first saw forex markets and realize that cornerstone of world economics is pure gambling and whale manipulation at least for last 50 years