/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13426197]

What are the best pop economics midwit books?

[The Nomad !N8Yn.I/WbM No.13426205]

>>13426197
Freakonomics
Obligatory Das Kapital

[Anonymous No.13426213]

>>13426197
Economics in one lesson
The economics book: big ideas simply explained

Most people feel qualified to have an opinion after reading these.

[Anonymous No.13426245]

Basic Economics by Sowell

>>13426205

Neither of these will teach you anything about economics, though Freakonomics is interesting

[Anonymous No.13426251]

>>13426213

First book is out of date

[Anonymous No.13426275]

>>13426251
Ehh I thought it was okay. The most valuable lesson in the book in my opinion are the explainations of the common misunderstandings in general economic theory. I think it fits the definition of "midwit economic book" pretty well.

[Anonymous No.13426482]

>>13426197
What do you mean by "economics"? Just remember the biggest problem is fundamental uncertainty and no not everything can or will be priced into markets.
Any "midwit" book of the sort you read will be epistemologically retarded and lead to a naive faith in very stupid ideas. You'd be better off trying to grasp probability.

[Anonymous No.13426528]

>>13426482

This is a retarded take

[Anonymous No.13426544]

>>13426482
The biggest problem is the distribution of scarce resources with competing uses. That is what economics is about.

[Anonymous No.13426572]

>>13426197
This guy's Basic Economics is the best place to start with economics. Yes, he may be ideologically free market, but every author you read on the subject has an ideological bent. You are actually better off reading free market economics first so you understand the classical theory properly, then you can critique it sensibly without sounding like a retarded Marxist whose never read a real economics book. Sowell's description of the price mechanism is the best you will find anywhere, indeed it is better than I have read in any actual economics textbook.

[Anonymous No.13426613]

>>13426572
>Thomas sowell man among mentor
>Thomas sowell a man among men
>Thomas sowell my mentor
>A man among men
>Thomas my tor
>Thoms Sowell my tor

[Anonymous No.13427806]

>>13426544
Why does the distribution matter? You're not questioning ownership are you? What about non-scarce resources e.g. pseudo-commodities like money? Are you telling me economics doesn't study money and banking?

>>13426572
But that man doesn't actually study how real firms set prices? How can he write about any price mechanism? Did you know most firms aren't really profit maximizers? See:

>Goals of Oligopolistic Firms: An Empirical Test of Competing Hypotheses
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1057831.pdf

>What Firms' Surveys Tell Us about Price-Setting Behavior in the Euro Area
https://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb06q3a1.htm

>Price-Setting Behaviour – Insights from Australian Firms
http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2010/jun/bu-0610-2a.html

[Anonymous No.13427818]

Threadly reminder that economics is not science.

[Anonymous No.13427827]

>>13426572
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1oUVY8Vanh7

:3

[Anonymous No.13427841]

>>13427818
>>13427818
https://vocaroo.com/i/basedtEbzusKZd

As someone who has been reading one of the original authors of the Theory of Games book go through a case-by-case analysis of published statistics analytically, I can assure you. Economics is a science. That is how it is treated.

:3

[Anonymous No.13427845]

>>13427841
Game theory is math. Math is not science.

[Anonymous No.13427858]

>>13427845
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1wlqGzpsYZ6

[Anonymous No.13427883]

>>13426197

>Real economist here looking for porn that clicked on the wrong subsite and ended up on /lit for some reason...

I'm going to have to say that anything you study about economics is really going to be going through some fundamental changes in the next ten years.
Since the heterodox economics have gained traction, it is getting much harder to defend anything written before the 2000s.

You see it comes down to conservation laws, and the lack of being able to hold them consistently. There are few if any invariant parameters and no conservations that can withstand mathematical scrutiny.
It all boils down to the paradoxes involved in making money a product, making labor a product, making production a product, that happens when you allow private capital.
In addition, what is included and not in a market is under serious attack. No longer are the public productions and public wealth going to be left off the books especially in an age of international climate efforts, demands for healthcare, and international labor migrations.
This is going to redefine capital and economics going forward.
So I wouldn't waste my time. If you are interested in economics just remember that anything involving supply and demand, competition or the free market is pretty much out, and is replaced by Modern Monetary Theory and other heterodox markets that restrict the paradoxes of private capital.

[Anonymous No.13427899]

>>13427883
no real economist would write drivel like this

>Modern Monetary Theory
give me a break

[Anonymous No.13427901]

Thomas Sowell.

[Anonymous No.13427905]

>>13427899
>hurrr monetarism
>i watched milton friedman on muh sony tee vee in 1981

[Anonymous No.13427922]

>>13427905
>hurr i can just make infinite money and it'll never come back to bite me in the ass

[Anonymous No.13427924]

>>13427905
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1OM1UrA5EZU

:3

[Anonymous No.13427931]

>>13427922
Hey you should listen to this too.
>>13427924

[Anonymous No.13427936]

>>13427924
thanks for the virus

[Anonymous No.13427949]

>>13427922
Literally no one claims that but keep believing inflation is some sort of platonic voodoo game and not a consequence of relations between money and dynamic real physical and productive resources. Good luck explaining price dynamics over the past 10 years boomer, I'm sure all that gold you bought in 2009 paid off.

[Anonymous No.13427960]

>>13427806
Is that mark-up pricing?

[Anonymous No.13427964]

>>13426197
For a sober look at the crises of modern capitalism that doesn't involve brainlet tier marxist 'Labour theory of value" stuff, I'd recommend Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Picketty.

It's on the very boundary of 'midwit' since it's a T H I C C-ass book but it's rather understandable to non-economists while still getting the fundamentals down.

[Anonymous No.13427973]

>>13427883
You think post Keynesianism will actually pick up?

[Anonymous No.13427992]

>>13427973
I hope not. I disagree so much with the overall premise and methodology of The General Theory it's not even funny. :3

[Anonymous No.13428005]

>>13427992
>post Keynesianism
>The General Theory

[Anonymous No.13428010]

>>13427992
>t. Austrian who wants to prax his mom so he live in the basement for another 10 years

[Anonymous No.13428024]

>>13428005
Well we must admit anything remotely deriving influence from Keynes' system is subject to flaws. But if it simply retains some of the terms and ideas, I could be behind it. After all I hated the macro concepts to The General Theory.

Didn't hate some of the smaller ideas.

>>13428010
I despise Austrian economics, good sir. :3

[Anonymous No.13428036]

>>13427973

No. Keynes is also wrong. Until you address that private individuals cannot steal public production, and the public consumption shouldn’t steal private production you can’t get your market to balance. The removal of any intermediary to trade or money or anything used as money or step trading in a barter system (a public production) from private hands in a decentralized way is the only way to eliminate the scalar divergence and curl of the money space that leads to non-conservation.
The trick is decentralized public banks locally attached to their municipalities. Interest on loans or investments goes to pay for what taxes pay for and no one can sell money for more money. You keep what you earn, but don’t keep what you don’t earn. You don’t get interest on your savings but it retains its value and you don’t pay taxes.

[Anonymous No.13428038]

>>13428010
Is psychology something you can make graphs for? No. Praxeology is at a similar level of "basics that have more to do with people than with the world" that it's inherently theoretical.

[Anonymous No.13428049]

>>13428024
>I despise Austrian economics, good sir. :3
t. Chicagotard

[Anonymous No.13428137]

>>13428049
I do not ascribe to a school of economics period, but I do prefer the scientific kinds. :3

[Anonymous No.13428157]

>>13428137
>the scientific kinds
What's the line of demarcation?

[Anonymous No.13428243]

>>13428157
Glad you asked.

Very often economics will link over into philosophy because of personal beliefs or personal terminological systems that suggest a certain conclusion.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek are victims of this, for instance, and while both hold some truth, there is also a lot of personal bias and perception in their works.

That's all fine and dandy, but I personally believe Joseph Schumpeter does what they both do very well himself, or built off of their interpretations of political philosophy scientifically.

There is a huge difference between political philosophy and political science, for instance.

You can bet if the economist is from the Lausanne or Neoclassical schools or is a Game Theorist, or just utilizing applied statistics, it's a scientific economist. :3

[Anonymous No.13428248]

>>13427806
>Did you know most firms aren't really profit maximizers?
Everyone knows that. Stop pretending like it's some genius revelation that the basic theory is wrong. Its a simplification to make economic models work properly. You know it doesn't actually matter whether firms ARE profit maximisers? It only matters that they ACT like profit maximisers. When you are starting out learning economics, you need to learn a simplified model of the economy, so assuming all firms are profit maximising helps. Then you can learn about the exceptions.

Also, Sowell does explain how profit maximising firms in a competitive market set prices (i.e. in a simplified setting, useful for beginners), according to the intersection of supply and demand. Obviously when the market isn't competitive and the firms aren't profit maximising pricing will be different.

>why does distribution matter
Distribution is important when resources are scarce. Even money is scarce, it must be in order to be a store of value. If money was not scarce it would be worthless. Obviously economics is concerned with issues other than the distribution of scarce resources with competing uses, but this is the main problem that it seeks to solve, and pretty much all the issues in economics involve this problem at their most simple level.

[Anonymous No.13428260]

>>13428248
>Its a simplification to make economic models work properly
That's how we ended up with free market economics. Overmathematization and oversimplification. It assumes that the market is infallible and can never be wrong.
>When you are starting out learning economics, you need to learn a simplified model of the economy, so assuming all firms are profit maximising helps.
It's literally taught as a law that all forms are profit maximizing. That's why neoclassical and Austrian economics are the biggest jokes.

[Anonymous No.13428271]

>>13428260
>free market economics
Is this an actual thing these days? :3

[Anonymous No.13428277]

>>13428260
It doesn't matter whether economic models make correct assumptions. It matters whether the models make accurate predictions. And for the most part, our models make predictions that are broadly directionally, even if not always mathetically correct to a certain figure.
As I already said
>You know it doesn't actually matter whether firms ARE profit maximisers? It only matters that they ACT like profit maximisers.

[Anonymous No.13428279]

>>13428243
>if the economist is from the Lausanne or Neoclassical schools or is a Game Theorist, or just utilizing applied statistics, it's a scientific economist. :3
So just playing around with mathematics not any empirical correspondence to reality or actual explanatory power.

>>13428248
>Its a simplification to make economic models work
That's problematic. You're entire pedagogical procedure there only leads to autism. Also you're just taking distribution as given and making models to make things look like its the best.

[Anonymous No.13428284]

>>13428277
>our models make predictions that are broadly directionally, even if not always mathetically correct to a certain figure

[Anonymous No.13428292]

>>13428284
You might not believe it but economics is actually a science and we do have laws where we can predict outcomes and cause and effect. For example, if you decrease the price of a good, the demand for a good will rise (excluding in cases where there is a speculative bubble). If you disagree with this, you literally believe economics is a pseudoscience with no prediction power

[Anonymous No.13428297]

>That's problematic.
Why is it problematic? If you models predict accurately it doesn't matter what assumptions you make. And if resources are scarce you MUST distribute them. How else do you decide who gets what? Distribution is literally a precondition of having anything

[Anonymous No.13428303]

>>13428292
>you literally believe economics is a pseudoscience
Yes, like psychology and almost everything else, economics does not have direct prediction power. Just like you said here >>13428277
>even if not mathematically correct to a certain figure
No real science is mathematically fucking incorrect. It's like those strange positivists who try to make philosophy out of math.

[Anonymous No.13428304]

>>13427827
hurrrr durr me want attenshun

[Anonymous No.13428305]

>>13428271
There's no shortage of libertarian and conservative New Keynesian economists.
>>13428277
>And for the most part, our models make predictions that are broadly directionally, even if not always mathetically correct to a certain figure.
That's why every neoclassical economist saw the Great Recession coming, right? Read some Steve Keen.

[Anonymous No.13428313]

>>13428303
The only people I see calling economics a pseudoscience are ass ravaged Marxists or people who have barely studied it.

[Anonymous No.13428318]

>>13428303
Is it not true that if you decrease the price of a good, the demand for that good will increase? You can predict that. I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that there will be another recession. You can predict all sorts of things with economic models and trying to pretend otherwise reveals a real ignorance of the subject

[Anonymous No.13428323]

>>13428305
>that's why every neoclassical economist saw the Great Recession coming, right
Unironically, Alan Greenspan, a borderline neoclassical economist and the chairman of the federal reserve at the time predicted it by 2005. That Schiff asshole predicted it, too. In fact, it seems like neoclassical economists were the only ones who did predict it.

[Anonymous No.13428326]

>>13428305
Economic models predicted that there would be a recession, just not how bad it would be. In the case of the Great Recession, no one knew what was happening with the subprime mortgages

[Anonymous No.13428330]

>>13428318
>you can predict all sorts of things
Yes, but not with 100% certainty. You can only judge things to be probable. That is the definition of a pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.13428331]

>>13428279
Some of those are just playing around with provable, yet conceptual, concepts within mathematics.

Others do use empirical examples.

It would be hard to make the argument that they aren't science though.

[Anonymous No.13428333]

>>13426245
/thread

[Anonymous No.13428338]

>>13428313
Science is empiricism. Empiricism is experimentation. This is the consensus view, not some fringe belief.
>>13428323
Unironically Greenspan testified before congress (there's footage of it, you can watch it on youtube) as to why he didn't predict what came about and why the models were wrong.

[Anonymous No.13428345]

>>13428326
Funny how a lot of heterodox economists predicted it.
>>13428323
Schiff I know for a fact is heterodox, he's an Austrian. Isn't Greenspan also an Austrian or Chicago boy? He's an Objectivist.

[Anonymous No.13428352]

>>13428330
>Yes, but not with 100% certainty. You can only judge things to be probable.
Then you believe all sciences to be pseudoscience, even hard sciences like physics, because you cannot state with 100% certainty that gravity is a law. The point is that it is 99.999999999999999999999% likely, so it approximates mathematically to 100%. In the case of economics, we have laws that are like this. For instance, I can tell you with 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% that business cycles exist and there will be another downturn, and that if you lower the price of a good, the demand for that good will rise (excluding price bubbles). Do you not see that by your definition, there is no such thing as science, only pseudoscience? You cannot even say with 100% certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, that doesn't make it worthless knowledge or lack predictive power.

[Anonymous No.13428356]

>>13428345
It's like conspiracy theorists when they get something right for once. If you make enough wacky predictions you eventually get something right. It doesn't mean your theory is true.

[Anonymous No.13428361]

>>13428352
He's probably a Dialectical Materialist and calls economics are bourgeoisie pseudoscience

[Anonymous No.13428362]

>>13428318
>I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that there will be another recession
That's kind of an easy call, seeing as there has been at least one every ten years for I dunno, at least the last 7 decades.

[Anonymous No.13428369]

>>13428362
>That's kind of an easy call, seeing as there has been at least one every ten years for I dunno, at least the last 7 decades.
Exactly. But these people are saying that economics has no predictive power, so it is a pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.13428370]

>>13428338
>Greenspan testified
Yes, he meant while he was chairman. He resigned in 2005. In very early 2007, he predicted a recession based on what he had figured out since then, making the Dow drop more than 3 points overnight. However, by then, Bernanke (ironically, a Keynesian who didn't predict the recession) was in charge and so nothing was done.
>>13428345
Greenspan was a Chicago Boy who was probably more similar to the Austrians in what he actually believed than the Chicago-eans.

[Anonymous No.13428373]

>>13428352
>99.99999999%
Okay, that's not what I mean. Things like physics are provable because you can experiment in controlled environments and thus get a certain understanding of reality. Economics doesn't let you do that and thus predictive power is inherently much, much lower. This makes it a pseudo-scientist.

[Anonymous No.13428384]

>>13428373
It isn't a pseudoscience because economic models are based on observing reality. Every economic interaction is an experiment from which economists should readjust their models and predictions. The fact is, we have identified patterns in behaviour of economic agents and economies such that we can make predictions about the future, and derive cause and effect. That makes economics a science. No one believes economics is as scientific as the hard sciences, but it isn't pseudoscientific either because it actually does have predictive power.

[Anonymous No.13428388]

>>13428370
>The collapse "shocked me," he said. "I still do not fully understand why it happened and obviously to the extent that I figure where it happened and why I will change my views. If the facts change I will change."
That was October 08.

[Anonymous No.13428399]

I like how Greenspan, despite being a Chicago boy, confirms the main findings of MMT.
https://youtu.be/DNCZHAQnfGU

[Anonymous No.13428402]

>>13426245
This is a fine choice. I understand that free markets and classical economics have come under attack recently, but this is academia were talking about. "Under attack" to them means the fierce disagreement over whether it's 90% right or 95% right.

>>13427964
This is also pretty good. I read it, appreciated his analysis, but honestly I feel like I took the opposite side of the message he was trying to make.

He goes through like fifty graphs and three hundred pages to show that the low wealth inequality of the mid-1900s was a weird fluke created by the two world wars. My response on reading was "oh, so we're returning to historical equilibrium." His response, in the final chapter, is basically "we need to make a massive tax on wealth so that this weird fluke can continue forever."

[Anonymous No.13428429]

>>13428388
> When you get this far away from a recession, invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign, for example in the U.S., profit margins ... have begun to stabilize, which is an early sign we are in the later stages of a cycle
> While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late. I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.
Your quote was something out of context. He was referring to when he realized the breakdown was going to happen in 2005-2006. You took the "shocked me," put it out of context, and then expected everyone to accept it. The rest is talking about how he is currently researching the area to figure out how the economy broke down. He still knew it would happen; he just didn't know why the business managers were being as incompetent as they were.

[Anonymous No.13428437]

>>13428384
>no one thinks it is as scientific as the hard sciences
And thus it isn't a science. What is the word for not being a full science with actual predictive certainty but being somewhere in between? Pseudoscience!

[Anonymous No.13428442]

>>13428437
It does have predictive certainty, examples of which I have already stated in several posts. That makes it not a pseudoscience. It isn't as scientific as the hard sciences, but it is still scientific. A pseudoscience has no predictive power, so to call economics a pseudoscience is wrong.

[Anonymous No.13428450]

>>13428437
These "full sciences" you mention do not have "actual predictive certainty either". They can only prove something is 99.99999999999% likely, not 100% likely. Because 99.9999999999999% approximates to 100% we treat them as true. In reality, just because you do an experiment and get the same result 1000000 times does not mean there is a causal relationship, it only means there is a 99.999999999% chance of there being a causal relationship.

[Anonymous No.13428478]

>>13428450
Ive been reading Athens and Jerusalem and Shestov thinks this concept, brought up by Hume, is the most important thing in all philosophy. He seems to think it destroys the entire project. It is taking him a long time to get anywhere though because his style of writing is somewhat dramatic.

[Anonymous No.13428534]

>>13428450
>actual predictive certainty doesn't exist in hard sciences
It does exist in 99.9999% of cases. As I said up here: >>13428373
it has a markedly lower amount of political certainty.
>>13428442
Pseudoscience definition:
>a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
Scientific method requires you to repeat experiments in a controlled environment. This cannot happen in economics, thus it is a pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.13428536]

>>13428429
I grant you that in the narrowest sense he predicted an economic slowdown before it occurred.
>Greenspan said that while it would be "very precarious" to try to forecast that far into the future, he could not rule out the possibility of a recession late this year.
That is the tepidest of predictions possible, however.

The quotation was about the how, the why, and the degree, none of which were predicted. And it's what his admission was about. That a total lack of regulation wrt credit default swaps, and derivatives generally, which Waxman establishes Greenspan's career position on, was wrong, and that what took place was not predicted, and that
>“This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades,” he said. “The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.”
This don't speak well of the predictive power of, well, Greenspan at the very least.

Twice you've brought up that there is another recession in the works. I'm curious about that, could you say more? Is there something that indicates this or are we simply overdue because it's been ten years.

[Anonymous No.13428554]

>>13428536
Sorry, Waxman establishes Greenspan's views on regulation for derivatives, Greenspan only concedes he made on error on credit default swaps. I worded that weird.

[Anonymous No.13428571]

>>13428534

That's not a good way to define science/pseudoscience... read Popper

>>13427964

Capital in the 21st Century is a fantastic book

[Anonymous No.13428574]

>>13428534
>It does exist in 99.9999% of cases.
Hence it is not predictive certainty.

And economics does have experiments. They just aren't controlled as well as in the hard sciences. Every economic interaction is an experiment from which economists can draw information about how economies and economic agents work. It is just difficult to determine exactly causality in many cases without a lot of data because it isn't as controlled as hard sciences. That doesn't make it a pseudoscience, merely less scientific than hard sciences, because there are experiments, just less ability to control for other variables. The Soviet Union is one example of an economic "experiment" gone wrong, but of course it is only limited in its usefulness because it was not conducted in a controlled environment. Econometrics deals with this using statistics to control for variables, to some degree. That is how academics isolate variables to determine causation

[Anonymous No.13428680]

>>13428536
>>13428536
>twice you said there is another recession in the works
I never said that and don't have strong opinions on that. You're referring to another anon.
>tepidest of predictions
Are you taking this off Wikipedia. How is:
>invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign
tepid? He literally just said, "The business cycle says another recession's in the works."
>quotations are about the how, the why, and the degree, none of which were predicted
No, they were, according to him, in my second quote
>I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late. I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.
Meaning he knew by 2005-2006. His apology, if you will actually watch the video instead of reading the Wikipedia article, is in context to when he realized in 2006, after he left the federal reserve and decided to do some researching on his own.
The second quote you posted didn't even prove what you were trying to say. All it said was, "everything collapsed contrary the ideas of my advisors," not "everything collapsed contrary to my ideas."
What shocks me is that you didn't even bother to read the quotes I posted.

[Anonymous No.13428700]

>>13428571
>that's not a good way to define science/pseudoscience
The dictionary is the assumption. How would you prefer to define it and explain.
>>13428574
Science requires the scientific method. The amount of predictive certainty provided by the scientific method is considered enough (at least by me and the dictionary) for it to be a science. Economics does not have the scientific method to work with (no controlled experiments) and thus isn't a science.

[Anonymous No.13428726]

>>13428700
But it is possible to control for specific variables in economics using econometrics

[Anonymous No.13428744]

>>13428726
It is impossible to control for all because humans are too complicated. We act irrationally and most econometrics do not control substantively. We don't know enough about the brain or what makes people tick (in psychology, praxeology, or whatever else we're using in this case) to be able to put most things into account.

[Anonymous No.13428751]

>>13428680
I'm literally watching his testimony before congress, in which Waxman is asking him about his career long stance on regulation wrt derivatives, after which Greenspan concedes he was wrong about credit default swaps, including degree of magnitude of effect (and then doubles down on his stance wrt every other derivative). Just like I said in the last post.

>How is:
>invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign
tepid?
Because he said
>while it would be "very precarious" to try to forecast that far into the future, he could not rule out the possibility of a recession late this year.
It's like you didn't even bother to read the quotations I posted.

>The second quote you posted didn't even prove what you were trying to say. All it said was, "everything collapsed contrary the ideas of my advisors," not "everything collapsed contrary to my ideas."
What shocks me is you're paraphrasing something I quoted him having said directly.
>the entire intellectual edifice collapsed
somehow becomes
>contrary to the ideas of my advisors
Why? Because you want it to?
If you can't even admit the failure and culpability of economics in contributing to the last recession then I can't take your position seriously.

Whatever I'm done. We're talking past each other.

[Anonymous No.13428757]

>>13428744
Yes, you cant control for economic variables completely. Neither can you in hard sciences, as most experiments arent conducted in a vacuum. The point is that the property of being a science is not is or isnt, but a spectrum of how scientific. Hard sciences are more scientific than economics, but both qualify as scientific as they have predictive power and use empirical methods to ascertain truth. Economics does this, just not as well as hard sciences. It is not a pseudoscience. Sociology is even more unscientific than economics but still qualifies as a science because it uses empirical methods

[Anonymous No.13428759]

>>13426197
Why has no one recommended any books yet. I guess I need to do it
>Basic Economics - Sowell
>Economics in One Lesson - Hazlitt
>Economics: A User's Guide - Chang
>Debunking Economics - Keen
>Capitalism and Freedom - Friedman
>The Drug Dealer's Guide to Economics and Finance - Martin

[Anonymous No.13428782]

Hahahaha the entire thread devolved yet again into a discussion about economic methodology. This happens on every economics related thread because brainlets who have never studied economics wont accept that it has predictive power, uses empirical methods and is a science.

[Anonymous No.13428816]

>>13428757
>most experiments aren't conducted in a vacuum
No, most are. Most experiments in the hard sciences have to be reproduced in such a way where all variables are calculably negligible. This is a major part of the scientific method and is absolutely impossible in economics.
>the spectrum is how scientific
We're not asking "how scientific is economics?" We are merely asking "does economics fall under a pseudoscience?" This question becomes, when looking at the definition of pseudoscience, "Does economics use the scientific method?" You have not shown any way in which economics uses the scientific method; in fact, that would be quite impossible.

[Anonymous No.13428823]

>>13428816
It does use the scientific method though. It uses empirical data to determine causality. That does not make it a pseudoscience

[Anonymous No.13428829]

>>13428823
A major part of the scientific method is reproducing it in such a way where you can calculate for all other variables, impossible for economics.

[Anonymous No.13428832]

>>13428402
I actually agree with your analysis but I probably have a different approach to it.

Picketty is essentially advocating for artificially recreating the conditions that made mid century social democracy possible. From a normative perspective I'd say that this would be an improvement but I question the feasibility.

Moreover, if vast (and growing) inequality is actually the historical trend, then the entire historical premise of social democracy falls to pieces. Which is to say, the idea that capitalism can be harnessed in such a way as to gradually create an egalitarian and co-operative society. The fact that gross inequality is actually the norm under industrial capitalism (and before, though that is less relevant given the radical changes since then) would actually seem to favor the Marxist political position, insofar that gross inequality creates the conditions under which revolution can occur. Social democrats have historically pointed to mid-century Europe as proof that Marx was wrong and that the classes can co-operate, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

None of that means Marx was right about the LTV though lol

>>13428751
>>13428680
I don't want to get too invested into this shitfest, but I think it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of economists thought A recession was going to occur AT SOME POINT in the late 2000s. No economist worth their salt, of any school, believes that modern economies as currently constituted can avoid periodic cyclic downturns. By the mid-late 2000s, the economic boom that was only barely tempered by the dot-com bubble/9/11 was getting old, unemployment was very low, and even if the extent of the debt crisis was unknown, people were aware of the existence of some risks, Greenspan included.

This is very different from predicting the near-apocalyptic crisis that eventually unfolded. Greenspan and nearly everyone else got caught with their pants down on the crisis that actually happened.

[Anonymous No.13430667]

>>13428759
HHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA :3

[Anonymous No.13430668]

>>13428260
>It's literally taught as a law that all forms are profit maximizing.
it's an assumption that's frequently made but it's not a law and it's not taught as a law anywhere

[Anonymous No.13430673]

>>13430668
Woah man. That’s weird. Eerie even.

It was 10 something last time this thread got a reply. Then we both reply three seconds away from each other at 8. Wow. :3

[Anonymous No.13430750]

>>13426197
There aren't any just pick up an economics textbook and skip the math
Literally every pop economics book purposely excludes concepts and theories that bring the writier's stance on economics into question
>>13426572
Basic economics is probably the most egregious example of a economist omitting basic theory for the sake of "simplification" yet happens to miss out on things like market failures and game theory

[Anonymous No.13430766]

[Anonymous No.13430879]

>>13430750
It's called "basic economics" for a reason. He actually deals with market failure examples in some of his other books.

[Anonymous No.13430965]

>>13428292
>For example, if you decrease the price of a good, the demand for a good will rise (excluding in cases where there is a speculative bubble). If you disagree with this, you literally believe economics is a pseudoscience with no prediction power
Firstly that's a falsifiable statement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
Would you accept your theory as being falsifiable?
Secondly you're not actually explaining anything of substance. When people change their consumption patterns a lot more is going on typically than just a producer arbitrarily decreasing their prices. What your doing isn't science it's feel good intellectual masturbation.

>>13428297
The problem is those models don't adequately explain the consequences of the most basic operations in aggregate and ignore important institutional realities. Why even start off with the assumption of scarcity? People can arrange their preferences regardless even if everything is infinite. Just assume away complexity.
Distribution is a precondition and result of production and what you're doing is attempting to intellectually justify a certain arrangement as most "optimal".

>>13428326
Didn't those same "models" by brain geniuses like Schiff predict other recessions which didn't happen? What were the projections for inflation after QE?