Why leftist hate economics so much?

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Actually, property rights really probably came from human nature in response to the environment. Property rights are a common response to scarcity, and to some extent emerge out of the ability of certain human beings to control and acquire resources, based upon their abilities. (not entirely) Actually, I wouldn't think of private profit as private taxation at all. Taxation generally refers to something imposed by a governmental entity, and I'd only be willing to extend it to semi-governmental entities, such as those that have monopolies of power based upon geographic location. (home-owners association, etc)


Well.... there are differences and similarities. I mean the "rules and legal structure by which they operate", is a really really big difference. It also depends on what you look at. Corporations are often bureaucratic, but at the same time, they also are more subject to "market forces". (you can try to break this term down later, I am only presenting it as short hand for the process that occurs)

On top of that also consider the invention of money, another social institution instituted by force (i.e. if you conterfeit money and you get caught you get jail time), proof that the "rules based" (invented) nature of institutions like money and therefore economics are inherently political.


I think you are now going on some form of rant, probably less connected to "rationality" at this point. (Then again, I'd bet that if you have studied a social science, it would only be sociology, so I doubt this is an internal critique, and as such, I have more difficulty making sense of it. Internal critiques usually recognize the terms of game as it is played, and then play with those terms.)


Well... to some extent, yes. All societies are in some ways "inherently political". This is just human nature. It is not avoidable.


Well, there are assumptions that economists are less critical of than they should be. However.... I don't see it the way that you see it. Property rights are assumed, but frankly, that's only because a property rights system is regarded as necessary to handle human interests. Ultimately, while economists are less concerned with the actual rules as they should be, they're major focus is on incentives. They do just fine examining incentives. If your criticism has nothing to do with incentives, then you probably aren't really criticizing economics to the extent that you want to. Economists have already begun to analyze corporations and governments as systems, and they find similarities and differences. The similarity tends to be in the logic of the organizational structure. The difference tends to be in the decision-making and incentive structures and for very good reasons.

Actually, I've spent a reasonable amount of time studying these issues. Maybe not the most. Maybe I am sloppy as well. However, I am probably significantly more informed on the history of economic thought than most people.


Most fields have unstated assumptions. As it stands, I do agree that economists should be more self-aware. However, I think you under-estimate their awareness of the issues already. While the econ 101 student or less thoughtful econ major might be dense on the assumptions, actual economists can and do avoid the traps that you say are in their way. (perhaps not literally every economist, but at least the ones who actually know what they are talking about in economics)


Y'know, I really have doubts about the whole point of "propaganda". Propaganda assumes something conscious. Economists are important mostly because our society is very economically oriented. They tend not to seek to be "propagandists" and to some extent, often are mild critics of the status quo.

As for "value-free" that statement really means that economists seek to describe the world without judging it. Now, they may fail, but that is still their relevant asperation.

As for cordoning off economics from politics? Umm... ok, most economics is taught at a highly theoretical level. Some teachers will intertwine it with politics, to liven up the conversation and emphasize practicality. Others will teach economics as if it is just statistical regressions and mathematics. I don't think you know very much of what you are talking about though.

I don't find the fact that this society has implicit assumptions to be condemnation. Every society has implicit assumptions. The real question is whether those assumptions are good or bad, not whether they exist. Frankly, it was properly considered education at the time to call slavery natural. The accepted background knowledge of society changes over time. You might dispute it, but then actually dispute it, don't hate it for being knowledge that happens to be in our background. All you'd really ever do is just replace it with your own favored background knowledge anyway, and someone could, just as mockingly, challenge what you believe.


Umm.... how much economics have you actually studied? You're making HUGE blanket statements, but I don't think that you really know what you are talking about. I actually have an economics degree. I believe my knowledge of economics has sharpened my abilities. I really don't know much of what you are talking(ranting??) about, as I consider myself very intellectually flexible.


Every culture legitimizes itself. I doubt it is even just the rulers, but rather the fact that if society wasn't justified in its own eyes, it wouldn't really maintain itself. As it stands, I think the direction you go is likely fallacious in that I think you assume rulers are more powerful than they are. If society is duped, then much of society is really a part of this deception, not just the rulers. Personally, I think our regard for democracy is kind of cultish, and our regard for implicit consent is overblown.


I've read. I still think you're full of it.

Sorry but the reputation is true, as is the Left's reputation for snobbery.



I hate to know where you went to school, because they really didn't teach you worth a darn. It is left-wing democrats that were involved in slavery, the Republican Party was formed by just before the Civil War and was against slavery, get your facts straight.



So, if someone makes a lot of money because they came up with a new invention they are immoral. xenon13, that's a load of bull and you know it.

That person who hired the dwarf for the bachelor party clearly invented something that led to a quantum leap in civilisation.

The Republican Party was effectively a totally abolitionist offshoot of the Whig Party that it replaced. In Britain, the Whig Party became the... guess? The Liberal Party!

I don't know where you came up with that.





Just cause a party in the US and a party in the UK had the same names, does not mean they are even remotely similar in ideologies, that is something which you well know.

The Republicans began as a liberal party - of that there's no doubt. The Democrats were the conservative party. The change took place in stages. The first stage was the failure of the Conservative Bourbon Democratic President Cleveland to adequately address the Panic of 1893 - and the Populist leader William Jennings Bryan grabbed the Democratic nomination in 1896... when Theodore Roosevelt got into power after the McKinley assassination the progressive forces were back with the Republicans decisively but when his successor Taft went with being a small-government laissez faire type Roosevelt ran in 1912 and took the progressive Republicans with him. Though Wilson had conservative southern tendencies he adopted some progressivism... the small government types continued to dominate the Republicans as they ruled in the '20s - only the emergence of FDR and the New Deal coalition cemented the Democrats as the party of the left but they still had the southern racists on side... From Goldwater, to the Dixiecrat Wallace led to the Southern Strategy consolidating the conservative white Democrats in the GOP.

The reflexive southern white support for Democrats through the New Deal Coalition era is very much responsible in a way for the progression of the USA and its emergence as a superpower... they voted for a much more intelligent set of policies out of spite! When they went Republican that helped lead to the USA's decline particularly as the neo-Confederates increasingly came to dominate the Republican Party.

xenon13, the Democrats still have the racists on their side. Republicans have actually gone out of their way to make sure people whom are racist that join the Republicans are unable to win any election.

It was the left-wing Justices on the US Supreme Court that decided Government could take away people's property and give it to corporations, the Conservatives were against that.

The neo-Confederates are not only solidly Republican but their values have taken over the Republican Party. All this talk about states' rights and decentralising the USA - they want to replace the US Constitution with the CS Constitution, effectively... This division of society into masters and servants, with workers being the hired help who don't count, only owners count... If the Republicans get their way the South would have conquered the USA and won the Civil war in the end.

When do you expect chattel slavery to return?

ruveyn

Thats because you assume human reasoning is universal based on enlightenments view of reasoning... reasoning isn't universal. See science:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Science says that reason is much more complicated then we have imagined. That the way you see the world is defined by biological processes, not pure rationality. i.e. you see what you want to see and often your unconscious mind forces you to see because of how your mind is structured.

This is why making "rational arguments" is often pointless since human beings pre-decide their views beforehand and then go looking for reasons to justify their views after the fact. The fact that we have people who have more then enough resources that would equal many lifetime earnings of the average person is proof enough the opposite is true: you are full of it, and my reasoning is just fine. Since you're trying to justify your view in a post-hoc fashion, where as I always deal with facts. i.e. if the economics is so scientific how come there are people are under served or not served at all? The answer of course is because economics is a political institution.

That one fact pretty much undermines some huge points about your point of view because it's demonstrably measurable by anybody, repeatedly and its true.

The biggest problem is your inability to understand how flawed the human mind is, especially your own mind because you are human. Arrogance and intelligence go hand in hand but this assumes that you are capable of weeding out your own errors and not deceiving yourself, most people are not capable of seeing errors in their own thought processes because they are _missing_ the relevant concepts and information that would enable them to have the epiphany provided they are not suffering from unconscious processing errors (as most people do).

The mind suffers from intellectual 'optical illusions' where one thinks one is correct, when in fact the hardware of the mind has over-ridden your critical thinking processes because it happens on an unconscious level.

Don't believe there are physical processes you can't control that can deceive your view of the world? See this:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/ ... oillusion/

Even if I did deal with your points, this doesn't mean you're capable of connecting the dots. Since your thinking is based on unconscious processes you have little control over and it assumes they are functioning in a way that is not unintentionally deceiving you. This is why rational argumentation doesn't really work because human minds are not equal in their potential to see errors in their own thinking.

Lastly if I knew methods of getting rich without having to work would that make me a better economist then you? Would you accept that as proof I've done the analysis?

First off, I am not going to go into the details(or even watch the whole video), but rather, I know who George Lakoff is, I've read some support and some criticism of him. He is not a scholar who represents the mainstream view of human reasoning abilities. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with assuming some degree of universality to reason, as while I recognize a basic element of the metaphor view, I think that linguistic determinism of the sort that Lakoff and also Richard Rorty hold to leads to outright absurdities that are not acceptable in the minds of most people, and incongruous with their lives. As it stands, any view that attacks the universality of reason also is a threat to science, but science works and is relatively successful.

The science, in general, tends to state that human reasoning has various biases, that these biases can have significant impact, and that often these biases can be reduced by experience, and other factors.


In part, yes. This finding is found with a few experiments.


Zak fiend, if "rational arguments" are pointless, then how can we ever meaningfully talk about the advance of knowledge. All sciences rely on some degree of rational argumentation, as they all require criticism of the theoretical structures of various beliefs in correpondence to realities.


Zak fiend, that's not an argument. That's not even a standardly accepted method of arriving at truth. That's just an idiotic assertion made without any grounding with our truth-finding methodologies.


Zak fiend, facts are irrelevant without the theories. Frankly, this is even partially an outcome of the view of human reason that is related to the position you espoused earlier, as reality has to be structured by human thoughts in order to be understood. I am explicitly working off of a theory. You have presented nothing, and don't even seem vaguely aware of what standard economic theory says. You aren't even relevant as a critic.

Economics does not force a certain set of political institutions to exist. It is a field of study. Sometimes people take the advice of economists. Other times they do not. Your point isn't relevant unless you can show some point of economic THEORY that supports your position. Otherwise, your argument makes no freaking sense.

That one fact pretty much undermines some huge points about your point of view because it's demonstrably measurable by anybody, repeatedly and its true.


Omg, Zak fiend, you do realize that knowing cognitive biases does not preclude your own suffering of them, right? In fact, in this case, it seems to have worsened your experience, as instead of engaging me as an opponent, you are now projecting loads of these biases to discredit me, regardless of what I state or do not state. I mean, as it stands, I have a working knowledge of psychology.

Do I have processing errors? Probably. Does this alter my criticism of you? Not really, because the rationales are straightforward, I don't regard you as knowing what the heck you are talking about, as all the things you say are argumentatively irrelevant, and you don't even put them into an argument.


Umm.... I already know about that illusion. It isn't the only illusion in existence. Interestingly enough, some of the illusions we face are actually culturally generated. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1601785 As are a lot of other behaviors.


Umm.... ok? I think most people recognize that I am better at systematic thinking than the average. Even further, I do have a broad background of knowledge. While I might not be ideal in seeing the errors in my own reasoning, all of this diatribe really suggests is that you are worse. Your rebuttal has little to nothing to do with my argument.


No, that's actually irrelevant to the study of economics. Economics is an abstract study. While knowing those methods could be relevant, but it wouldn't prove anything, as for the most part it is unrelated.

AG
'Umm.... ok? I think most people recognize that I am better at systematic thinking than the average.'

I would agree with this statement, and AG and I agree on basically nothing.

What does states' rights have to do with slavery? There is such thing as Federal Government having too much power you know.

Slavery and the Civil War was an argument of the 10th Amendment versus the 9th. The Confederates argued it was their right to hold slaves as it was not explicitly banned in the Constitution and therefore their decision on the state-level was legal.

The only good idea the Confederates ever had was to eliminate riders on legislation.

Why do lefties hate economics? I don't know, perhaps they've worked for Wal-Fart and have blamed capitalism for a company which abuses it.

The constitution of the CSA also permitted line item vetoes.

ruveyn

Again, where are Republicans advocating slavery? The 13th and 14th amendments kinda make it difficult to reinstitute slavery.