[bb86754]

Agreed. But I don’t think economics is off the hook here either. To me it’s the social science that best masquerades as a “hard” science while still make huge jumps in logic that are rarely justified in the papers I’ve read.

[peatmoss]

I studiously avoided making a normative statement that economics should take over this role. Any personal preferences I have here are separate from my beliefs about what I predict to happen. :-)

I ~agree with you about the quality of econ papers. In some cases, I see the quantitative facility of econ papers as being better than similar studies executed by e.g. sociologists. But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues.

Assuming my prediction that social science research shifts to econ comes to pass, I think the natural pressure will be to drag econ's present quality bar downward.

[graemep]

> But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues.

I agree, I sometimes thing economists like quantitive approaches because it makes them feel like "real scientists" and numbers have an air of credibility.

It look a lot of arguing to let my MSc dissertation supervisor let me do one on financial theory (which I am good at) rather than econometrics (which i struggled with).

[Tarsul]

Love your use of ~ in "~agree". Such a nice shortcut. Might steal that :D

[snakeyjake]

?

Economics research is a series of cults who all predict different outcomes for the same series of inputs based on how the original founder of the cult, I mean school, felt about the king and his ability to tax the wealthy several centuries ago.

There are several trillion social sciences more rigorous than economics.

As far as I can tell economic researchers actively discourage experimentation because the results of an actual well-run valid experiment would ruin everyone's career.

[UweSchmidt]

While we're bashing economics, something I truly miss is that no new high level economic systems are being discussed prominently. As important as fusion in physics or cancer treatment in medicine, we badly need to explore and discuss something beyond the heavily ideologized systems of capitalism, communism and feed this to politics to communicate these potential options to the voters. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism, which is old and half forgotten. It appears as economics is kind of muted, students and professors beholden to an ideology themselves or feeling the need to appease potential employers who are usually politicized institutions with no room for intellectual curiosity. What else remains in terms of practical economics besides determining the inflation rate (oops, that one is also politicized)?

[abeppu]

People love to talk about ideology, but is what what economics should be about? Every major economy on the planet is a mixed economy. In China, government expenditure and revenue are 33.1% and 25.5% of GDP respectively. In the US, the corresponding percentages are 38.5% and 32.9%. Neither totally free markets nor planned economies seem to work, and empirical research obliges economists to look at the economies we actually have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

I think Piketty does kind of do what you're talking about -- and though he makes a good case, I think when he argues for concepts like universal inheritance, that's more an act of political advocacy than economic scholarship. It's for the economist qua economist to study/analyze the conditions under which the rich get richer, or where class mobility decreases, etc -- but it's up to people and governments to choose what they want society to look like.

[johnnyanmac]

My impression is that economics is like voting. We have a dozen different alternative structures that aim to fix many of the most obvious issues from centuries of use. but no government system has an incentive to shake things up to such a degree.

We have a gigantic broken window, but the house still works. And ofc my government system has generally had a reactionary response rather than a preventative one; nothing gets done until it's too late and many people die.

[marxisttemp]

I was hoping that link would be to Georgism! The list of notable Georgists is a testament to how convincing an idea it is.

[shadowerm]

This post is complete nonsense and you obviously haven't looked very hard.

You could start with the work of W Brian Arthur.

Unless by "discussed prominently" you mean youtubers who don't know what they are talking about. Then you would be correct.

[amelius]

Yes economic system is highly flawed.

Elon Musk owns $400B. Earth will become uninhabitable after 1 billion years from now (when the heat of the Sun becomes too large for us).

This means that Musk, if he lived that long, would be able to spend $400 every day until the death of all life on Earth.

This is 15 times the current average daily income worldwide.

If this is not insane, then what is?

[immibis]

New Zealand has a conservative government since the most recent election. Economists help conservatives stay in power, while sociologists and so on help conservatives stay out of power. Conservatives are very quid pro quo. That's the difference. It has nothing to do with the content of the research.