You know you're a left-wing moron when

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The Austrian School is not a very influential part of mainstream economics, so the point is rather moot. As TM pointed out elsewhere, the useful tools from the Austrian School have been incorporated into neoclassical economics, and the useless ones (like praxeology) have been discarded. Just as the useful tools from Marxism have been incorporated into the study of labour markets. Both schools are currently fringe groups within the broader concept of economics.

The neoclassical (Samuelson) approach is currently the mainstream. It is also scientifically superior to both the Austrian School and Marxism.

Ecological economics has the potential to challenge the neoclassical synthesis, but since Herman Daly doesn't want to be a scientist, the challenge is unlikely to be significant in the near future.

When your Barack Obama.

I do have to admit, that one of the parts of your post that made me giggle a bit was the insistence on behavior being so tied up in economics, considering that some of the main tenets of the Austrian school you seem to despise so much is

"The theory that economic events are best explained by a deductive study of human action."

"The theory that testability in economics and consistently accurate mathematical modeling of an economic market are impossible because mathematical modeling of any real market affects the decision-makers in that market and "testing" relies on real human actors who cannot be placed in a lab setting without altering their would-be actions."

However, enough about that. the reason I say that economics are mostly about accounting numbers and cash flows is that human behavior is a variable already accounted for in those cash flows and accounting numbers.

In my day to day trading I regularly use certain behavioral observations about human beings, such as humans being risk averse (tend to pick the less risky of two otherwise equal alternatives). Humans having a tendency to think "that stock has already gone up X so I better not buy (or possibly sell off what I have)" or "that stock has dropped Y, better not buy that".

However, in the end its mostly about numbers. If it was all about behavior, then behaviorists, not economists would be the richest people in the world. Paul Ekman would have a permanent Duchenne smile on his face.

That is unless you want to take it to a level where you argue that every number is the outcome of behavior, which I concede is entirely possible to do. After all, you could argue that people base their decision to purchase a product based on subjective value theory and cost benefit analysis of that product.

That does however appear to create somewhat of a chicken and egg argument, in effect which comes first, the subjective value or the net present value calculation. Then again, the net present value calculation for a new project, would be based on estimated cash flows which then again would be based on projections, which again are based on customers purchasing the product, which again is based on the supply of that product and the subjective value.

You can feel free to call this guy an idiot all you like...

Debunking Economics

YKTYRALWM when you believe that money can be printed or created out of thin air.

Money is an exchange commodity generally accepted in your market place.

ruveyn

It is a micro-economic concept. It only describes "efficiency" in terms of the theoretical utility benefit to buyer and seller with regard to a single product. You can't simply sum up the efficiencies of individual transactions and get the efficiency of the economy as a whole.


No, I think the truth of the matter is arrogant people like to think that their indifference to moral concerns makes them an elite type of emotionally detached hyper-logical super-being and think economic theory somehow justifies their thinking.

In a society of pure self-interested cut-throat competition even the winners don't fare as well in the long run. The system that derives the optimal benefit to all will always be a mixture of competition and cooperation. That's why humans evolved with a moral compass that contains notions of "fairness" and "meritocracy". Notice I didn't say that competition doesn't have it's place or that everyone should be perfectly equal so don't throw any strawman BS at me.

Any good economic theory needs to have a component of behavior theory and game theory. Neo-classical economics completely fails in this regard as it uses a model of behavior where human beings essentially behave like robots.


I don't just accuse right-wing economists of being "anti-empirical". Right-wing economists admit to being anti-empirical.

Also, libertarian idiots are famous for injecting their own idiotic morals into economic debates and seem completely oblivious of the "is-aught" problem. These days the most popular moral ideologues of economics are on the right.

Ah, the paecon.

*rant*I try to keep a civil tone, but F**KING READ BARRO, DAMMIT!*end of rant*.

Robert Barro *is* empirical economics.

Snide remark: You know you're a left-wing moron when you ignore facts about human behaviour.

Repeating tired right-wing economic talking points does not make you look original or witty. I'm glad to know I'm a left-wing moron though. It's good to know which particular hole I belong in.

Last edited by marshall on 07 Oct 2012, 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I will if I have the time.

You think voting Obama is the lesser of two evils. (reverse for the other thread).

You know you are a left wing moron when you believe Obama's talking points about big oil getting subsidies (when big oil is actually excluded from said subsidies).

Money cannot be printed out of thin air, it requires paper.

The only intrinsic value that money has is that which people assign to it. Currency is very much an invention that followed the rise of civilization. Pretty much anything can be used as currency; and before this was invented people would barter goods. The one thing that is valued as a currency in all cultures, despite the fact that it's fairly useless except in jewelry,is that lustrous yellow metal we call Gold. The fact that we use paper currency which can printed in large quantities means that the treasuries of the world can increase or even decrease the supply of money as a way to regulate the economy in times of crisis. So what is money? It is basically a claim on stuff.

Actually, Gold is not a useless metal in modern civilization, in fact gold is used in a lot of electronics because it has some properties not found in most other metals. It is also generally unreactive, which is unusual for a metal, and under normal circumstances will not rust or tarnish.

Silver is also used a lot in electronics.

I am aware that Gold is used in electronics but the trouble is that its global supply is limited and this has the potential to drive up the cost of electronics even though Gold has remarkable electrical conductivity. The demand for Gold as a reserve asset is so enormous that much of the worlds Gold is sitting in vaults when it could be used to vastly improve the efficiency of electronic circuitry.

I personally have always thought that Copper is far more beautiful than Gold(along with being A LOT more abundant), but unlike Gold it tarnishes rapidly, corrodes easily, and is so soft that copper jewelry is easily damaged or destroyed.

there is more gold than silver on earth and silver is far cheaper even with the multiple practical applications.
silver exists in fairly limited veins, only at the surface, with very little background metal so to speak, this also means that we have already mined a very large percentage of our silver deposits, gold on the other hand exists in some concentration all over earth and to great depth.