Can we have a thread talking about the ridiculous cult that is mainstream "economics"?
They never get anything right. They are constantly wrong about when the next crisis hits etc. and work with the premise that "more profits" = better and similar things - is there ANY economics department that doesn't advocate for more privatization? It's like there is no alternative except more privatization, and it constantly fails, yet these clowns continue to get invited into talkshows acting as the great experts of economy. This is no political economy, this is religion, and Marx has been outsourced to the social science and philosophy department where he's raped by PoMo bullshit.
Economists in capitalism are much like feudal priests. There are different heresies, but they all ensure the common man that the system is infallible. Everything wrong is the work of [insert "external" issue]!
Nicholas Butler
The one at my uni is full of Keynesians and has Marx’s Capital as required reading.
Leo Hernandez
Which uni is that? surely not an american one
Henry Morgan
It's in leafland.
Brandon Scott
I haven't read the book, but I do like Steve Keen. He's an intellectually honest thinker even if I don't agree with him 100%. I have a pdf copy that I need to get around to reading.
And you're right about mainstream economists being almost worthless. They can't predict anything and their solutions almost never work. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke predicted "moderate growth" for the year in which the financial crisis happened. There were people like Steve Keen who predicted the financial crisis long before, and yet the mainstream laughed at them.
Jackson Jenkins
I wonder why the mainstream hated him.
Christopher Powell
Fun fact: despite not being a Marxist, Steve Keen has read literally everything Marx wrote as well as written various articles about Marx's theory of value etc.
Jackson Ross
As a historian I hate the most when they project modern economic conceptions retroactively onto the medieval or ancient world. It's hack work and nothing but specious propaganda.
Eli Bennett
Could you give an example of this?
Easton Brooks
Ah a fellow historian, its nice to see that the subject of preserving history isn't dead yet. Would it be like trying to use modern economics to explain for instance the decline of Persian Empire before 636 CE on the rise of Islam in the Middle East in Arabia?
That I couldn't really say definitely, as I'm unfortunately pretty ignorant when it comes to MENA history. My bailiwick is mainly European history, mostly Rome through the middle ages. If you've seen big autistic posts about Rome and its economy, it was probably me.
I would imagine it was just as insensible though. You can see at various points in Europe some primitive elements of what would evolve into the modern capitalist system, but as modes of production go, the method, manner, and philosophy of wealth, production, and trade are almost entirely alien to one another. If you brought a peasant from any point before the Renaissance to today, and showed them how we do things now and why, they'd probably think we were insane.
But that's speaking pretty generally about Europe, and from what I understand about, say, Chinese economics, even contemporaneous economies were diverse in their characteristics.
I'm actually reading right now The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire by Rostovtzeff, and he also projects capitalist terms back onto the ancient world. He has some interesting things to say about class politics in Athens and Rome, but you've almost got to go line by line to try and separate the ideological chaff from the factual wheat.
If I'm able to later I could share a few pdfs on medieval economics of you'd like.
Jacob Fisher
I didnt finish this book, but I did read it a bit. He (unsurprisingly) doesnt understand Marx. Hes a lukewarm centrist. Muh synthesis type I cant quote it, and I also domt remember exactly what it was, but I remember how he did it. Hes one of those people that adds/assumes/""develops"" Marx's ideas, and then later btfos them. Basically, he thinks he understands Marx, but he really doesnt. He has a flawed interpretation and realizes that it doesnt make sense. Hes basically one of those """socialists""" who became liberals that genuinely believed and believe that Socialism is where you distribute everyones property. In short, hes a liberal so theres a pretty hard limit on how informative/interesting he is. Not worth the time to read it, at least to me. Why read Steve when you can read Marx, Lenin, etc…
Liam Williams
the best part about mainstream economics is that serious recessions are an objective truth, something we need to expect and prepare for.
Nicholas Stewart
"business cycles"
Tyler Phillips
Can anyone share some meme pics debunking neoclassical and other assorted "economics"? I think we need to expand on making some more.
Yeah and unfortunately he still doesn't understand Marx
Jaxon Hill
Much like the reports from the Soviet Union back in the day. A man had 1 chicken that layer 1 egg that day, he told his boss his chicken laid 2 eggs, causing it to just go further up the chain of command, each time increasing the numbers of eggs made, until it gets into the paper that the country is over stocked on eggs, even tho there are not enough eggs to go around.
Hell yeah let's read someone from your neoliberal torture chamber
Andrew Carter
I doubt any astrologer would take a book called “Debunking Astrology” seriously either, but that wouldn’t make it less right.
Ryan Ortiz
i mean, did he not just explain it? it was all faulty reports. however, how he can prove that on the other hand remains to be demonstrated.
Grayson Price
If physical indicators had been faked like that regularly, the USSR wouldn't have lasted longer than a month. So no. What was done with some physical indicators that showed shit results is that their publication got interrupted. So, what what people living in the west studying the USSR had to deal with occasionally was some annual indicator for a specific thing not being published in one year, and then the next year a lower indicator than the last published year. The embarrassing data was still available internally to high-rank decision-makers.
What was really vulnerable to manipulation wasn't something like counting tons of steel of fucking eggs, but aggregations that came with utility judgements. Suppose there is only one supplier of a particular product, and they now create an improved version of the product. There is recognition that it is better than the old version, so these guys have a chat with planners how that quality improvement should be reflected in a higher price. Suppose the producers are able to get approval for a huge price increase, and you as a consumer decide the quality improvement isn't worth that and you (and many others) want to rather continue buying the cheaper old version. But guess what, they don't produce the old version anymore. This then appears in the statistics as a huge increase of productivity achieved by these guys. (My source for the above is Alec Nove. The Cockshott-Cottrell model that always strives to keep product prices close to production cost doesn't suffer from that.)
Astrology is a really fitting comparison. Astrologists also like fancy math and diagrams and historically some actually competent mathematicians also dabbled in it.
