Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics

[Fake Boris]

Can you read? At all? I understand English isn't your first language but this is ridiculous. I complained that you aren't even telling us what these neglected nuances are! You've got this thing about inflation, but you keep using the word in ways that don't produce coherent sentences. It's as if I criticized your philosophy on the basis that colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

I have made my thesis perfectly clear. You don't seem to understand the basic epistemology involved with my point.

This is another Not Even Wrong. The statements you're making are semantically empty. The only advice I can give you is to try to formulate them as claims about the actual production, distribution, or consumption of goods and services.

No they're not, you don't understand them. I am trying to avoid as much as possible a debate internal to economy, because I'm criticizing its assumptions.

Wrong. Bilateral, exclusive "free trade" agreements imposed on countries like China were equally mercantilist. The mercantilists adopted the rhetoric of Adam Smith but none of the actual policy.

Bingo. They understood the benefits of free trade, they applied them.

By the way, did you know that Adam Smith himself pointed out that the foundations of his economy rested on his Morals? Economists in general have done just that, they have adopted his rhetoric alone.

The overwhelming motivation for such interventions was always the profit of particular incumbent industries - which reaffirms my point that other interest groups are far more influential than economists.

Who pays economists, in general?

[Fake Boris]

He lacks the ability to think meaningfully about any of the involved concepts, as do you (more precisely, he has not yet demonstrated this ability, and neither have you). Furthermore, Kuci's position is not nonsense, though it is a very weak point (in the sense that it is a weak statement, not that it is weakly supported by our experiences as a species over the last few thousand years).

You have never tried to understand, which is what makes you a joke.

[Fake Boris]

Honestly, what kind of ****** would believe that economists, in general, are not complacent to incumbent interests?

[Fake Boris]

Anyway, Kuci, I'll be back with a more consistent post collating my loose shots.

Until then, let's play trivia: name an ideology that has had more influence than classical economy since the year 1800.

[Elok]

Until then, let's play trivia: name an ideology that has had more influence than classical economy since the year 1800.

The answer to this question would seem to depend on the rubric one uses to define influence. Marxism has had a very strong influence, as measured in human corpses.

[DaShi]

Keynesian Economics saw the West through the post-WWII boom. Until they got tired of that and decided to let it all go to ****.

[Kuciwalker]

I have made my thesis perfectly clear. You don't seem to understand the basic epistemology involved with my point.

No, OB, maybe it really is just a language issue or maybe it's that you don't know enough about the terms you are using, but you HAVEN'T stated a coherent thesis.

No they're not, you don't understand them. I am trying to avoid as much as possible a debate internal to economy, because I'm criticizing its assumptions.

You haven't actually identified any assumptions that are 1) held by economists and 2) false. You've made a bunch of incoherent or barely coherent claims about inflation that have been uniformly false, irrelevant, or incomprehensible to everyone but you.

Bingo. They understood the benefits of free trade, they applied them.

This is exactly the opposite of what I said. "Free trade" was in scare quotes to emphasize that the agreements did not represent free trade.

By the way, did you know that Adam Smith himself pointed out that the foundations of his economy rested on his Morals?

1) For ****'s sake, stop call it "economy". In modern English the proper word to describe the study of the general system of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services is "economics". "The economy" refers to the existing pattern of production/distribution/consumption at any given time (frequently used in senses like "the economy is doing well" or "the economy is doing poorly", which relate the current aggregate production of goods and services to some estimated potential level of output). "Economy" as a noun, without a definite article, is not related at all to economics - it refers to efficiency, e.g. "economy of motion".

2) Economics typically involves both the descriptive study of the economy (which, like physics or biology, is independent of any ethical foundation) and prescriptive advocacy of particular policies that are deemed, through the conjunction of the descriptive study and some particular ethical framework, to achieve good ends. Obviously, because of its particular relevance to public policy the descriptive study has frequently been corrupted by interest groups or ideologues who want to justify a particular policy, but that does not mean the descriptive study is subjective. Quite obviously there is a single true theory that describes the actual behavior of the economy and this theory is completely independent of your personal ethical framework.

3) Economists almost universally use a utilitarian ethical framework when judging policies prescriptively. They don't go off and say "lalalala ethics don't exist".

Economists in general have done just that, they have adopted his rhetoric alone.

Untrue.

Who pays economists, in general?

Universities.

[Kuciwalker]

Honestly, what kind of ****** would believe that economists, in general, are not complacent to incumbent interests?

Feel free to point out where anyone claimed that.

If this thread is about nothing more than "economists are human beings and therefore are subject to the same failings as every single other human being on the planet", then **** off and stop wasting our time.

[Kuciwalker]

Anyway, Kuci, I'll be back with a more consistent post collating my loose shots.

Until then, let's play trivia: name an ideology that has had more influence than classical economy since the year 1800.

The single most important influence free-market ideology ever had was to rally the world against Marxism, and thereby give the communists free reign to impoverish or slaughter only half of the world's population rather than the whole.