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Economics:
Let’s turn this
Into this!
That’s capitalism. There are other forms of economics.
Yeah but capitalist economics is all that they teach in the indoctrination system… Unless maybe you pay for it later in college.
And TBH the scientific credentials are pretty trash either way.
I like the variations
Agriculture is only 12,000 years old. I suspect there are many more possible levels.
Laugh while you can, number boy.
Economics is basically social psychology with some numbers sprinkled in.
Don’t forget gambling.
… And wishful thinking!
So… religion
No joke: Economists do kind of fulfill the role of priests in that they explain the “necessary [fake] world order” to the masses.
Saying “Capitalism is a bad system” gets you comparable comments from economists as “Gods don’t exist” gets you from priests in a religious society. Both comments also get cops on your ass as well (depending on where you live).
They also have to justify how keeping at least 3-5% of people unemployed is a good thing for their economy god. That one and that inflation and growth are required to keep an economy going when we all know that there could be sustainable level existence if the investor class didn’t exist.
Because economist and even business leaders don’t actually have any control over the economy. They try to predict it and make changes, but they have no real power as was shown by COVID and the Ukraine war.
No, surely all will be good if we invest in so-called “AI”, war and the distopian surveillance state. /s
They don’t even disguise it, praxeology is effectively theology without the metaphysics.
I struggle to consider it scientific because it bakes in so many fundamental assumptions without questioning them. At least mainstream economics.
Ah, uh, it’s a xkcd. Expanded by a reddit user, forever ago.
Philosophy is in entirely the wrong place for some reason. Should be slightly to the right of maths.
For this reason it seems closer to religion for me
As someone that tries to be a bit of a generalist. Neoclassical economics is the one field of study where I have less respect for the field the more I learn about it and the problems that it tries to tackle.
Don’t all scientific fields rest on fundamental assumptions? I mean, just to pull an example at random, astronomers were hung up on the geocentric model of the universe for a long time before we came up with the heliocentric model, which in turn was ditched for the “no true frame of reference” model we now use. Having flawed assumptions doesn’t make it non-scientific, just incorrect.
What makes a difference is how models are evaluated in light of new evidence. If a model makes predictions that turn out to be incorrect, then a big part of scientific progress is in re-examining the underlying assumptions of the model.
My beef with economics isn’t that it’s often wrong, but that economists are often keen to present themselves as scientists to boost their epistemic authority, whilst also acting in a deeply unscientific way.
The worst economists for this get very offended if you say that economics is a soft science, with more in common with psychology than physics. This offends them because they hear “soft science” as a pejorative. Economics absolutely is a science, but the more that economists try to pretend that their object of study isn’t wibbly wobbly as hell, the less I respect them.
I’d consider economics a subgenre of sociology.
Yeah, I think I’d agree with that. Although it’s gotten large enough that it doesn’t feel like a subset of sociology anymore, it still feels descended from sociology. (To give an example of what I mean by being large enough it’s now distinct from sociology, biochemistry sprang forth from biology/biomedicine, but now is its own distinct field, with methods and modes of inquiry that are distinct from biology/biomedicine)
If making unproven assumptions is problematic then physics is in some real deep shit.
I mean, yeah. We don’t have a unified theory of quantum gravity because at least one of our assumptions is off. Science is just figuring out precisely which assumptions are wrong and how wrong they are.
I keep calling it a pseudoscience.
Someone told me that I “don’t know what a pseudoscience is” and that I was “using the word wrong.”
No. No, I know what it is, and I used it precisely the way I meant it.
Wayyy too many people think classic economic theory is a legitimate field…
classic economic theory
To be fair, that’s like 150 years old, back when they believed in spontaneous generation, and the idea that continents move was absurd and crazy.
Yep somehow the indoctrination system hasn’t improved in the past 200 years. It’s not just economics either.
And yet the global economy is still operating on the same basic assumptions…
They’ve been made even worse by further developments of those basic assumptions as expounded by neoliberalism and reaganomics, but the underlying premises are still the same.
The global economy is definitely not being run by economists or anything particularly close to prescribed economic principles. Most countries are being run by some combination of authoritarian and/or populist governments whose economic policy is crafted to benefit either a small ruling class, or to win elections (voted on largely by people who don’t understand economics).
The most obvious example of this is the United States, which is the single largest national economy, and which keeps instituting tariffs despite “tariffs = almost always bad” being one of the first and most foundational tenets of macro econ.
The global economy is being run by capitalist oligarchs, whose central premises for existing are based on classical economic theories (private ownership of capital, extraction of resources, and exploitation of labor), their operational strategies are based on classical economic theories (infinite pursuit of growth at all costs, externalizing risks while internalizing profits, quarterly profit margins being the sole indicator of growth, cutting costs to minimize expenses and manufacturing scarcity to maximize pricing, etc.), and the policies meant to regulate and/or stimulate economic activity are based on classical economic theories (austerity for the poor, supply-side “trickle-down” economics for the rich including tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts).
The tariffs are an exception attributable to the overt buffoonery of an extortionist grifter running the show. It doesn’t negate all the other examples of how classical economic theory is destroying society and the planet.
It’s definitely just Maths with feelings sprinkled on top.
If you read a book by any investor they’ll talk about the irrationality of the market. They’ll say how daytrading should be mathematically impossible, but admit how some people do profit a lot from it.
I wouldn’t call it pseudoscience, because it’s like mixing maths with psychology.
It’s a soft science at best, but some people try to treat it like it’s a hard science.
I still hold that it displays characteristics of pseudoscience by operating on unsound premises and unverifiable assumptions though
true! maybe with some biology, anthropology, network effects, game theory churned in
Fake numbers with fake relationships between them.
Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is closer to theology than physics. Its power is proportional to the belief it commands.
Finance is an arbitrary subset of mathematics, cherry picked to retroactively support a given economic model, and applied as its supporting mythology.
It’s entirely imaginary, which means alternatives are only ever a conjuring away.
The opposite. Its power is inversely proportional to the belief it commands.
The efficient market hypothesis only works if people don’t believe it.
Finance is an arbitrary subset of mathematics applied to money
Kinda nitpicky but finance is applied math or engineering. Finance people haven’t done much in terms of actual math. There’s no money in math (literally and figuratively).
it is closer to lobbying and propaganda than theology.
A distinction without a difference. Lobbying and propaganda are basically the prophesizing and scripture of politics.
not going to mansplain my perceived difference between the two, but I think we agree on the jist of it
economics is definitely closer to law studies than to theology. i mean, look at all the ownership relations and having to know what is proportional, how to run a business, rules and regulations, and such.
fun fact: theology was a respectable thing in the medieval ages. it was closer to maths/logic and spoke about how to organize a society and run a state. There were lots of influential people who studied maths but were also theologists, and lots of people studied theology and became mathematicians. I mean check out Isaac Newton who revolutionized physics with his maths-approach but also studied theology heavily. Check out Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who revolutionized mathematics but studied philosophy/theology. There’s a lot of overlap.
Theology, back then, was basically a mixture of logic/mathematics/how to organize a society/politics/and some metaphysics and philosophy. It was not a “make up random stuff” thing at all.
All of that changed in the modern age when theology became a cringe-worthy niche with basically no real content. Idk how exactly that happened. In the medieval days, however, it was one of the big three studies: theology (math), law (and economics), medicine.
Another way I often frame my perspective on this is:
Economics is the social control mechanism that filled the void vacated by religion after the Enlightenment.
Mythology was replaced with finance.
… Churches with banks.
… Clergy with economists.
… God with GDP.I don’t see either as inherently problematic systems, but their lack of rigorous foundational attachment to reality informs my argument that they should be applied as subservient tools, as opposed to their current role as dominant, dictatorial weapons.
Yeah theology is “given these base assumptions and this text, interpret the will and nature of the divine.” I can respect a person who studied theology at a respected university in all the ways I can’t respect someone who studied preaching at a Bible college. That said I hold a weird amount of opinions on Christian theology for a pagan
Economics is just applied statistics with a little sociology mixed in
And simplified until linear relationships appear.
To be fair, my engineering degree also did this.
Good thing I learnt that linearity in my chosen specialty only breaks down in the exotic circumstances of air, room temperature, 1 atm pressure, and distances of <0,5 m or >30 m.
In college - Assume everything is linear
Later - Everything is not linear
Tell us you dont understand economics without telling us…
Supply demand curves are usually drawn with straight lines.
never once in my economics education did they do that. not just because it’s easier to draw a curve than a straight line, but because the shape of the curve defines the type of good. maybe your economics education was just… bad?
Type economics supply and demand curve into Google images for more data points than your personal experience.
ooo, everyday people (not economists) can put bad images up on the internet
This is from an encyclopedia. Here’s another
Did your economics training teach you to ignore data?
Economics is just fascist sociology.
maybe pay attention to more than chicago
Don’t forget the other sibling: IT. Theoretical Computer Science is basically a form of mathematics, with all its algorithms and data structures that you can study and do proofs about.
Save some potato salad for cousin Music!
Music is entirely math though. Just arranged all pretty like.
like, i know some people insist music is math, but in my opinion that music is always lacking emotion. i prefer my music more on the side of folk song: not much math but a lot of passion in it.
I like both. Classical and prog rock both famously have a lot of math in them and I love them as genres. But also I kinda want a banjo to belt out some Seeger
Writing a png file by hand currently and ngl this feels like 90% law school (or whatever these “rules” fall under) and 10% math.
Any “scientific” field that produces Art Laffer is a fraud.
Dude isn’t even a low point in econ. People like him are the reason econ exists.
Economics is a funny one as ultimately it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many) that people often incorrectly lump in with maths.
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments on an actual economy though beyond models and simulation. And as anyone who has watched a Gary Stevenson video or two will know, your average academic economist is pretty bad at models and simulations.
Though I guess even bad experiments are still experiments
Edit: typo
Most of them are pretty bad at anthro too tbh lol
If they were good at stuff they wouldn’t be economists
Source: I’m an economist
Gary Stevenson is also an overconfident blow hard who thinks because he made money on the stock market he knows more than everyone. I’m a psychologist not an economist, I don’t like economics, but this is all still wildly off base from what actually happens in academia. Economist don’t run randomized control trial (RCT) style experiments. They use completely different techniques with different statistical methods to test assumptions. Are these as high quality for causal reasoning as a RCT study? No absolutely not. However I think the average person would be shocked at how much of every field of science does not confirm their studies to that gold standard and how difficult it is to match that exact specific scenario statistically.
Yes, we do run RCTs. There are entire branches of economics that can be entirely controlled for, double-blind and randomized. For example microeconomic theory and game theory.
Yes, there are fields that get unethical to experiment under as you scale things up (think macroeconomics), which is why we have famous papers like The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation - AJR.
Natural experiments are used all the time in many fields, especially the social sciences, for ethicality. That doesn’t make them less valuable, as they test for things you would have never gotten to test for through RCTs, and don’t serve as a “crutch” due to the lack of RCTs. They serve different purposes.
And that’s just one aspect people get wrong, economics isn’t all about straight lines like another (vehemently wrong) commenter was saying. It’s also not about politics, even though the economics of politics are taught conceptually. At least in my European university, no one forced ideology with the study of the median voter theorem or Vickrey auctions, among many other topics.
Anyway, rant over. This whole post is a rage-bait and people engaging in it are either ignorant of the subject matter (totally fine if you’re willing to learn and accept you’re wrong) or simply rage-baiters themselves.
My apologies, I didn’t mean to imply you never run RCTs, mostly that it’s rarer that other disciplines and most of what lay people know of your science comes from non RCT work. I’ll have to take a peak at that paper you linked as it looks interesting.
Your point on natural experiments is on point as they are dreams come true for many social scientists (thought sadly not always pleasant ones in recent times).
I also have to agree this post is pure rage bait. People dunk on social sciences all the time but would have their brains melt trying to learn Structural Equation Modeling and the concept of the Latent variable. My arguments with economists usually comes from my place as an IO psychologist who argues about labour and labour markets not if your science is real. It’s sad how many will look st economics as useless in the same breadth they venerate figures like Marx. People need more education not less.
This is an interesting perspective. I feel like I disagree with you, but I don’t know why. Whenever I feel like this, it usually means that there is some interesting learning ahead of me if I am willing to chew on some ideas for a while, so thanks for writing this comment
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments
The actual foundation of economics.
it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many)
…
Anthropology, as in what cultural arts are like in different groups of humanity? How is that a science? I even wanted to go into this field
Of course it is! We’re just animals, after all. Is documenting the behavior of different species of beetles a science? The only difference is that we can replicate behavior through culture, not just genes.
Economics brings the spherical cow issue to its logical extreme with “efficient markets”
If markets are driven by “rational actors” then why is advertising a trillion dollar industry?
They’re just contributing to perfect information, or, uh…
I think a mainstream way of seeing things is that there’s rational agents and non-rational agents, and they behave differently.
I.e. a lot of economy discusses how a rational agent would behave. But economic schools also recognize that not every human is a rational agent, and that’s what advertisement is for. Basically, advertisement is a way to part fools and their money, i.e. give the money to more rational people instead. This is also partially justified with the philosophy that the world would become a better place if all the money (and therefore power) was in the hand of rational people.
all the money (and therefore power) was in the hand of
rationalrich people.This is the real point of econ. It’s all about justifying inequalities.
Under their ideology the rational become rich and thus the most rich must be the most rational. And don’t we want the world to be run by the most rational? Or do you want want those poor, gross, irrational agents?
It’s an overt grift indicative of the deep rot in capitalist ideology.
well i seemingly have a very different viewpoint, because the most interesting economics bits are econometrics, essentially data science - the same things all other stem folks use to find the underlying distribution, estimators, their significance, finding the p value. Using this to model whole world is just as wrong as saying all of chem is solved by taking mendelev periodic table. sourely it works, and explains some stuff, but just knowing it does not predict all of chemistry. same way, for example ls-lm model (suppply demand curve) does not explain the whole world, and good economists do not claim they can explain it (sorry for using bad examples, 1 only took 2-3 eco courses).
Bro, hear me out, what if I buy some of your company, bro, and you buy some of my company, and then we, like, keep buying and selling slices of our own companies back and forth to each other?
Bro we’re gonna generate so much economy from this. We’re gonna generate trillions in value, bro, just trading back and forth.
… wait… product? What product?
Economics is just statistics but they ignore half the data that goes into it. It’s homeopathic statistics.
And economics is inherently chaotic, with near identical inputs to a system resulting in wildly different outputs.
ed:sp
“yo it’d be funny if we invested in Playstation”
Boom, all the predictions just went out the window
“Economics is basically math” is one of the greatest PR stunts that anybody ever pulled. Mainstream economics is pseudoscience sprinkled with some maths so people take it more seriously, it has barely any more predictive power than palm reading.
The main reason being that if they actually did the math in good faith, the outcomes wouldn’t fit the preordained conclusions. A researcher recently wrote about his experiences trying to get a bad study retracted and being stonewalled.
Math is doing the heavy lifting, economics is just borrowing the muscles and hoping no one notices. 😄
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