Which ideology is the best at economics?

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Which group knows economics best?

Conservative (or other center-right ideologies)	15%	[ 4 ]
Liberal (or other center-left ideologies)	15%	[ 4 ]
Socialist (cooperative capitalism, social democracy etc.)	30%	[ 8 ]
Fascist (nationalist or other far right ideologies)	0%	[ 0 ]
Libertarian (laissez faire on market and social issues)	37%	[ 10 ]
Anarchist/libertarian socialist (non-propertarian, direct democracy)	4%	[ 1 ]

Total votes : 27

ruveyn
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09 Nov 2010, 10:02 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Umm.... most textbook are IP..

What is IP?

ruveyn

Awesomelyglorious
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09 Nov 2010, 10:05 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Umm.... most textbook are IP..

What is IP?

ruveyn

Intellectual Property. IP is often short-hand for that. I'm surprised you didn't know that.

ruveyn
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09 Nov 2010, 10:08 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Umm.... most textbook are IP..

What is IP?

ruveyn

Intellectual Property. IP is often short-hand for that. I'm surprised you didn't know that.

I know what intellectual property is. I just did not figure out that IP stood for it.

ruveyn

psychohist
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09 Nov 2010, 10:42 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

psychohist wrote:

Accurate predictions will come true whether or not someone exploits them. That's what makes them accurate.

No, not at all. "Accuracy" merely means that given the current set of events, the prediction will happen. The criticism is that exploiting a prediction involves changing what will happen. The basis of this criticism is that most predictions have value to somebody, and that most actions people take based upon these predictions will change the overall system. I mean, basically, the argument is that accurate predictions won't exist, because if they come into being, the system will evolve based upon those predictions and throw the entire issue off.

Think about a future predicting device. If you knew the moment that you were going to die, you would probably change your life, but changing your life means that the moment you will die will change. Thus, the accuracy of the prediction at a moment will cause it to later be inaccurate.

That's not my experience. When I was doing that kind of stuff for a living - granted not for the whole economy, but for the telecom industry and a little work for the polyethylene industry - we could make good predictions about how the market would grow and where prices would be that could not be affected by the actors. Our clients could decide to participate or not to participate, but if an industry was going to tank, it was going to tank, and the best a company could do was to stay out of it so someone else would lose their shirts instead.

It's like a prediction about when you are going to die that you can't change - the more you try to change it, the more you find yourself playing into fate's hands. That's what accurate predictions are like.

Awesomelyglorious
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09 Nov 2010, 10:45 pm

psychohist wrote:

Well, I'd really bet that part of the issue is also size. Microeconomics is a lot easier to predict, and it is a lot easier to base oneself on fundamentals there. Macroeconomics is just full of variables, and full of various investors hanging on every word.

Quote:

It's like a prediction about when you are going to die that you can't change - the more you try to change it, the more you find yourself playing into fate's hands. That's what accurate predictions are like.

Well, ok, and that's what economists have been told to seek. Those are just really difficult as they usually require unentangling the microeconomic incentives.

Wombat
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09 Nov 2010, 11:04 pm

What group knows economics best?

Are you kidding?

(1) Jews.
(2) Chinese.
(3) Indians.
(4) Koreans.

ruveyn
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10 Nov 2010, 4:12 am

Wombat wrote:

What group knows economics best?

Are you kidding?

(1) Jews.
(2) Chinese.
(3) Indians.
(4) Koreans.

South Koreans, not North Koreans.

Please see:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... k-dark.htm

ruveyn

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10 Nov 2010, 11:03 am

ruveyn wrote:

Wombat wrote:

What group knows economics best?

Are you kidding?

(1) Jews.
(2) Chinese.
(3) Indians.
(4) Koreans.

South Koreans, not North Koreans.
ruveyn

I stand corrected. :lol:

xenon13
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10 Nov 2010, 4:33 pm

In Canada, the Conservatives deliberately strangled the economy and yet people have been convinced that they are the best people to run the economy! There's so much propaganda that says that the meaner the ideology, the more economically efficient it is, therefore the Right knows better to run an economy. This truly is a Big Lie and it's everywhere.

waltur
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10 Nov 2010, 6:03 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Since we had all sorts of economics threads, now the question comes to WP members to now vote on which political ideology they regard as most competent in their knowledge of economics. "Competent in knowledge of economics" is not so much a question of right answers, but rather knowledge of economic theory, and/or other things related to academic economics.

I plan on using the same categories as an earlier political affiliation poll, except, I will drop Marxist, as I see it as a sub-category of socialist.

which ideology is the best at economics? scientology. hands down.

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AceOfSpades
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10 Nov 2010, 6:25 pm

Wombat wrote:

What group knows economics best?

Are you kidding?

(1) Jews.
(2) Chinese.
(3) Indians.
(4) Koreans.

ROFLMAO that killed me

As for the topic, I guess it would be the right wing depending on how it's done. If government regulations are done right to reduce anti-competitive practices then it's all good. I voted libertarian under that assumption...

ruveyn
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10 Nov 2010, 9:37 pm

xenon13 wrote:

A fine argument for separating politics and business completely.

ruveyn

Sand
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10 Nov 2010, 9:53 pm

ruveyn wrote:

xenon13 wrote:

A fine argument for separating politics and business completely.

ruveyn

If business is unregulated by government experience has demonstrated clearly and repeatedly that business will abuse it's freedom and quickly inflict frightful damage on the populace in general in the matter of poisonous foodstuffs, frightful pollution and ecological damage, dangerous working conditions, vital destruction of properly performed finance, monopoly pricing to inflict unbearable overpricing of services and goods and all sorts of nasty business. Business has no morality but to squeeze as much money as possible out of the public whatever the value of the product and services. It is unsurprising that an advocate of might makes right and a psychology of total abject selfishness is so business oriented.

xenon13
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10 Nov 2010, 10:09 pm

The Meaner the Better lie is based in part on the "virtues" people are taught. Good medicine tastes bad. If it tastes bad it's good for you, if it tastes good it's bad. There's virtue in self-denial. When Mellon ordered liquidationist policies to deepen the Great Depression, he remarked that this would cause a more moral and harder-working and better person.

Perhaps people should understand that as right wing government want more poverty and self-denial that in fact they are worse for the economy.

Another point. One reason the Communists failed in the war of ideas in Europe particularly is because they were austere and were self-denialists in their own right, the command economy was essentially one driven at the supply side. It was a conservative's wet dream, in a sense... why waste energy on pantyhose when you can produce more steel? That's real production. It's not the liberals, but the conservatives who are more like the Communists.

ruveyn
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11 Nov 2010, 5:38 am

xenon13 wrote:

Another point. One reason the Communists failed in the war of ideas in Europe particularly is because they were austere and were self-denialists in their own right, the command economy was essentially one driven at the supply side. It was a conservative's wet dream, in a sense... why waste energy on pantyhose when you can produce more steel? That's real production. It's not the liberals, but the conservatives who are more like the Communists.

Is that why they want less government control over the economy?

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 11 Nov 2010, 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

psychohist
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11 Nov 2010, 12:28 pm

Sand wrote:

poisonous foodstuffs

Speaking of "poisonous foodstuffs", notice how the obesity epidemic started right when the government promulgated the "food pyramid".

Nothing about the economy is so bad that the government can't make it worse.

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