Economics 101

I am committing extensive wonkery while pointing out the limitations of the ways in which much science is done. But I want to emphasize, as I have before, that despite its problems the scientific enterprise does manage to muddle though over time to more and more accurate understanding of reality.  When a community of experts has a high degree of consensus about an issue, you need a really strong reason to doubt them -- and some random nutjob on the Internet is not an example. The Covid-19 vaccines do not alter your DNA, they do not cause you to produce or shed virus, they do not make you magnetic, they do not contain microchips that allow Bill Gates to track your whereabouts . . .  .  They do protect you against serious illness, long term disability and death, they make you less likely to be infectious, and any adverse effects are either brief and mild, or extremely rare. And you should believe all that despite the criticisms I make about how clinical trials are often done. These particular trials were all done in the open, transparently, they are very large scale and very rigorously conducted. So believe it. Get vaccinated.

However, science has sometimes gone down weird and even very dangerous blind alleys. Phrenology, for example, and scientific racism. Most unfortunately for our present world, another pseudo-science continues to enjoy enormous prestige and is unquestioningly accepted by journalists and policy makers. That is the pseudo-science of economics.

There are honorable exceptions among people who hold faculty positions in economics, but the majority of such people are quacks. Economics is taught to college freshmen as follows:

• Promulgate a list of assumptions. None of these is actually true, and in fact a vast body of empirical evidence decisively shows that they are false.
• Play out elaborate fantasies of how the world would work if they were true, using mathematics to describe non-existent relationships among entities that do not exist.
• Forget that the assumptions are false and go on to explore every more elaborate mathematical fantasies as you progress in your "education."

Economics professors are paid much higher salaries than professors in other departments. They often have endowed chairs and sit on high level government advisory councils, get appointed to powerful offices, and  are talking heads on TV. The reason for this, despite that they spout utter nonsense, is that their ideology is very comforting to wealthy people and justifies the kinds of policies that let them get richer and richer while screwing over everybody else. That's economics 101! (As George W. Bush loved to say.) 

 

I have systematically deconstructed this pseudo-science in the past, as more and more people who do hold the title of professor of economics are also doing nowadays. That's good news, but it hasn't made much of a dent yet in the cultural authority of this quackery. I interject this cautionary note because it seems to fit with what I am doing now, but I won't explore it in more depth unless by popular demand.

 

Shorter version: Or, as I remarked to a fellow student as we were waiting to take our qualifying exam in economics, "It's a vast edifice of bullshit erected on a foundation of sand." He agreed.