Why are so many in the humanities ignorant of economics?

>Economics of neoliberalism

How big was the bogeyman they Told you about?

>Taking Hayek or Friedman seriously

>Hayek
>Friedman

You're the one posting a hack and a discredited ideologue.

yes that will be one extra large latte please

It's institutional. Economics and humanities are in separate departments at my school, Business and Arts.

There is good reason to keep people who want to change the system away from theory on how it works. Mainstream economics is the theory on how our society works and you're considered ignorant for not knowing it, which is good for those in power because mainstream economics carries all of the assumptions necessary to keep the status quo in it.

Now I say economics is theory of how society works and not knowledge because it's borderline theology. Mainstream economics has been a degenerative research programme for something close to 60 years, if you want to start at Keynes imploding it from the inside, or 100+ years if you want to start from Walras' attempts to save economics from Marxian critique.

I know one of you was being satirical but this has to be said.

To those who seriously think that the maths in economics is too much for people to understand I laugh. As a physics and engineering student looking at the mathematics and the complete lack of rigour in economic logic is just fucking embarrassing.

On mythematics, the more mathematically rigorous you make economics the more likely you are to destroy all of its theories. See Kenneth Arrow accidentally destroying equilibrium assumptions and DSGE.

Very funny. I know more about economics than you.

>Socialist "economics"

Do you enjoy touching yourself while posting on Veeky Forums?

The real world is more complicated than memes but thanks for trying to play.

Do you? So much misinformation on this board and if someone tries to actually improve the quality of discourse we get anti-intellectual faggots like this trying to trivialise things.

Why did I even post.

>if someone tries to actually improve the quality of discourse
Is that what you thought you were doing?
I'll give you this, you do write like the STEM student you claim to be. For fuck's sake, pick up a style guide or something.

>I know one of you was being satirical but this has to be said.
>To those who seriously think that the maths in economics is too much for people to understand I laugh. As a physics and engineering student looking at the mathematics and the complete lack of rigour in economic logic is just fucking embarrassing.
>On mythematics, the more mathematically rigorous you make economics the more likely you are to destroy all of its theories. See Kenneth Arrow accidentally destroying equilibrium assumptions and DSGE.

pretty much

So, question for all you armchair economists: What would've happened if Bretton Woods was set up around the Bancor [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor] instead of the USD?

I'm considering using it as a bit of a handwave for an alternate history world differing greatly economically, but I'm interested in what the realistic effects would be since the USA would no longer face the Triffin dilemma and no longer have the power to unilaterally kill the system.

Furthermore, did greater market liberalization and income inequality in the first world follow naturally from the end of Bretton Woods, or were those ultimately inevitable?

If the Bancor would fail, how would it do so and on what timeframe?

It's a topic that interests me quite a lot, as limited as my economic knowledge is.

The question of the role that economics plays in modern social and political discourse is way more interesting than griping about whether it's a real subject or not.

A lecturer once suggested to me that economics nowadays fills a similar social role to that of witchcraft in pre-modern cultures. Not sure if I buy it, though there are some interesting parallels.

I'd say that the current state of economics in political discourse seems to have a lot more in common with the politicization of flawed interpretations of evolutionary theory in the first half of the 20th century, minus the genocide of course.

Because its not a fucking science. You cant really say "if i do this, i get this" because nobody knows how things like inflation, deflation, house bubbles and shit like that works (dont tell me 'someone' does because they dont, if they knew with the certainty a biochemist knows about human metabolism we wouldnt experience recesions every 5 years)knows. There are a hundred currencies, millions of corporations and organizations having their way with the economy, how are you going to know shit? It's all imaginary paper and 'credits'. Fucking electrons are much more predictable...

the Veeky Forums board in general is a joke, it's mostly undergrad kids going to cookie cutter colleges who think they've figured the world out

>extra large
>he doesn't know that you can't get a 30 OZ hot drink
>now his spagetti is spilling about how they "did it at the other store"
>he wants to see the manager
>coddle him into accepting the 20 OZ

>laughingbaristas.esp

>Here are 350 million Europeans. They need so much bread, so much meat, wine, milk, eggs, and butter every year. They need so many houses, so much clothing. This is the minimum of their needs. Can they produce all this? and if they can, will there then be left sufficient leisure for art,science, and amusement? — in a word, for everything that is not comprised in the category of absolute necessities? If the answer is in the affirmative, — What hinders them going ahead? What must they do to remove obstacles? Is time needed? Let them take it! But let us not lose sight of the aim of production — the satisfaction of needs.

>If the most imperious needs of man remain unsatisfied, what must he do to increase the productivity of his work? And is there no other cause? Might it not be that production, having lost sight of the needs of man, has strayed in an absolutely wrong direction, and that its organization is at fault? And as we can prove that such is the case, let us see how to reorganize production so as to really satisfy all needs.

>This seems to us the only right way of facing things. The only way that would allow of Political Economy becoming a science — the Science of Social Physiology.
the entire field of economics btfo by santa claus in three paragraphs

t. neoclassical cuck

How's being 19 so far champ?

>implying not almost every 20something thinks he's got the world figured out and the ones that don't are on a spiritual journey in Asia

Going into my fourth year for my Economics degree and the whole faculty is FULL of Chinese foreign students. Must be almost 50%
Does anyone have an idea as to why there are so many? Possibly a starting point for other programs?

Nah. It's a good thing to have on your resume for their new updated mandarin system.

1. Friedman was neoclassical.
2. Keynes was not neoclassical.
3. Disagreeing with Austrians wouldn't make you neoclassical.

How can a post be so smug and so ignorant?

desu senpai Karl Marx was the greatest economist of all time. Read "Capital" to understand.

so what? same goes for real scientific method. despite all the glories of greek math, and roman engineering, they only did theoretical science. we still had alchemists trying to transmute lead into gold 500 years ago.

why do people in this site think economics=economic thought and think they can just apply their favourite schools to the real world?

there's no more efficient way to find out what man wants than through the free market. Production didn't lose sight of the needs of man, the opposite happened.

>There is good reason to keep people who want to change the system away from theory on how it works.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Leftists actually believe this.

True answer: humanities gags know that their best chance at getting a job is working for the government in one form or another, hence they support theories that advocate for big government. Economics teaches that limited government is better. Hence there's a conflict of interest there. It's not that they don't know who Hayek, etc. They avoid them like the devil is afraid of a cross, because they remind society that these called intellectuals are a tax-consuming drain. It's pure self-interest.

You're missing the point, needs come before wants and the free market can't conduct an in-depth study into human needs and the means of satisfying them.

it doesn't need to. People will buy what they need too, not only superfluous things that they want.

and if they can't afford it?

I'm not ignorant of it, it's just that modern economy is shit and should be handled completely different from the base up, so I don't find a reason to get into the way it maintains itself, I'd rather we focus on changing it entirely.

resource based economy and globalism is the only truly modern option we have for the future of human civilization.

Unless you think that, in places that people are starving, they are doing so because they're producing iPods instead of food, this question is unrelated to what we are talking about.

But healthy food is fucking expensive, that's why obesity is such a huge problem. Also there's the fact that the profit motive throws away this idea of production based on needs.
When the average person goes to the shop, they don't know what they need individually to be healthy, nor are they entitled to it by the amount of labour that social physiology has deemed necessary and no more.

>healthy food is fucking expensive
Go read the sticky on Veeky Forums and educate yourself on proper nutrition. Eating healthy is cheaper than going to McDonalds.

>they don't know what they need individually to be healthy
And you're telling me the State knows better? People can take care of themselves and if they don't, it's their responsability. They're not babies.

>nor are they entitled to it by the amount of labour that social physiology has deemed necessary and no more.
Explain

>The triumph of Capitlaism in the cold war and the institution of the global free market is in reality hardcore SOCIALISM!!!

>And you're telling me the State knows better?
it's not always just either the state or a proprietarian market system
>People can take care of themselves and if they don't, it's their responsability. They're not babies.
everything we eat, use etc in society has been made by other people so in a social context freedom means autonomy and not independence
>Explain
economics ought to concern itself with the minimum amount of work that needs to or can potentially be done in order to meet the needs it studies, otherwise you're under the despotism of a boss because of the state of production and its ownership as private property

>it's not always just either the state or a proprietarian market system
who would it be then?

>everything we eat, use etc in society has been made by other people so in a social context freedom means autonomy and not independence
I'm pretty glad we have a free market and I don't have to grow my food. I'm not sure you understand the amount of work being autonomous would require.

>economics ought to concern itself with the minimum amount of work that needs to or can potentially be done in order to meet the needs it studies, otherwise you're under the despotism of a boss because of the state of production and its ownership as private property
You're advocating mediocrity. Economics shouldn't and won't be held down by what someone else thinks is "necessary". Each individual does that for himself. The free market is the truest reflection of what people want and that should be our guidance.
And by the way, contract arrangements between bosses and workers are voluntary.

anyway I'm out, see you later.

>who would it be then?
It could be any other method of organisation really.
>I'm pretty glad we have a free market and I don't have to grow my food. I'm not sure you understand the amount of work being autonomous would require.
I do, growing your own food is independence and by autonomy I mean freedom within the interdependence of a society.
>You're advocating mediocrity. Economics shouldn't and won't be held down by what someone else thinks is "necessary". Each individual does that for himself. The free market is the truest reflection of what people want and that should be our guidance.
>And by the way, contract arrangements between bosses and workers are voluntary.
It wouldn't be what one or another person arbitrarily decides is necessary, it would be backed up by evidence and this is why Kropotkin said it would be a real science as opposed to economics. It's weird how the right-wing talks about individualism in a collective sense, there is individuality but somehow the free market represents a collective want and the Stalinist or Jacobin notion of "the people's will" for guidance. Lastly, a voluntary choice is not necessarily a free one and real freedom requires more than two choices, especially when those choices are "have your labour stolen" or "starve".

Economics is basically horoscopes with numbers

>Implying people want what they should
you're literally dealing with a bunch of faggots that can't stop eating McDonald's and buying Apple products to fill their empty lives, and because of that shit we have many people who can barely have enough food to eat let alone the privilege of an Iphone and McDonald's and they slowly deplete all of our resources with their unwillingness to accept the fact that we should be stop destroying the environment for their shitty personal gains

>full
>under 50%

Modern economists gentlemen

top kek
modern economists confirmed for getting rekt

In your first line you argue without missing a beat that economics ignorance in the humanities is a conspiracy by the elite to suppress change.

Then you have the gall to claim economists lack rigorous thinking?

Your braincase must be an empty bowl in to which maths notes are found and little else

>this frightens the socialist cuck

what's econometrics?

That depends on what man wants.

In wartime especially, central planning is often more efficient than letting the free market do it's thing, because conventional warfare is quite a clearly defined thing. It's quite easy to guess whether you should make more tanks, more planes, more boats, and know which model of each you should make.

Which, I think, eventually hits the problem when some people talk about economics. In the wartime example, economics are very clearly being used as a means to an end, a way of serving a human goal. Too many people would have the inverse: People used to serve an economic system.

i'm a different guy than you were responding to, but ...

>It could be any other method of organisation really.
that's not an actionable suggestion.

>work to grow my food
>autonomous
>independent
>interdependent
it sounds like you're playing a semantics game, redefining words to fit your position. if you mean consumer choices are limited by the products that farmers and ranchers choose to make, then you are correct in that sense. however nothing's stopping you or anyone else from becoming a producer, especially if you think there's some huge unmet demand.

>wall of text
western countries have minimum wages and large cities have rent control.

the truth is unskilled labor often produces less value than minimum wage. 6-12 months of on the job training can create a more valuable worker, but until then the employer risks operating at a loss. visit the immigrants outside home depot, and you'll see the free market value of unskilled labor. how do you "steal" something worthless?

look at walmart's example. they're headquartered in Benton AR, because real estate is dirt cheap. Living in a big city is a luxury, not a need. If you can't afford it, move. socialists define too many things as needs when they are mostly luxuries.

>burgeois conservationalists donating money to fund wildlife preserves (instead of increasing farmland).
truly our masters know what's best

What is hyperbole samefag

...

That's where Wal-Mart started from. And the community at large greatly improved for it.

Oh, so you a fan of austrian school of economics? Please enlighten us with your wisdom. What do you know, other than:
>Must privatise everything!
>Free market will run economy for us!

seconding this

>Surplus countries with excess bancor assets and deficit countries with excess bancor liabilities would both be charged to provide symmetrical incentives on them to take action to restore balanced trade.
is an interesting idea.

That's kind of the whole issue. Economics is maybe the ONLY academic domain where there is a dogma and people actively pushing for the dogma to be taught the way it is.

The very fact that you think that socialist economics is a contradiction is a symptom.

>why do people in this site think economics=economic thought and think they can just apply their favourite schools to the real world?

Enlighten us with your actually "objective" conception of economy then.

And if they don't actually know what it is?

You give people too much credit, you do know some think that, in order to cure their cancer, they need cristals right? There is a very real difference between perceived need and biological need. And marketing is all about fucking that line up.

Have you watched a single political debate regarding wealth or taxes?

Because if you actually did, you'd understand that there are some people pushing very hard to keep the status quo going. They very much favor our contemporary understanding of economics regardless of how flawed they may or may not be. We act on them as if they are a complete science, when much more rigorous fields of theory rarely show the hubris to think so.

Your equivalent would be an IOU on reading comprehension. At least there's something floating around in him.

Ahhh, marketing; the mosquitos of the social order.

>be a real scientific discipline
>when the evidence points in a certain direction, you act on that
>people whose beliefs aren't supported by evidence accuse you of being dogmatic

The system works.

What books do I need to read to become an economics lord? I want to be able to pwn Marxists in internet arguments

The system works. That's it? That's your argument?

We clearly don't live on the same planet mate.

Besides, no, it is NOT a real scientific discipline. Real scientific disciplines change or adapt their paradigm when paradoxes arise.

The Capital.

Oh wait.

>Because economic is serious science of the level of math, physics and engineering

This is simple.

Find an example of a country that adopted actual "seize the means of production" socialism, and I'll concede that the academic community has been unfair to left economics.

>Chavez destroys manufacturing
>To win the elections he expropiates oil and expends the revenue on paychekcs to create a clienteraly base
>This works when the price of oil is at its peak
>Price of oil hits its lowest
>As the economy is not diversified as before, Venezuela collapses
>Le evil capitalists are sabotaging us, and the real world is more complicated dude.

*and succeeded

Shit, I woke up at 2pm this morning.

What the fuck am I doing being this tired.

>desu senpai Karl Marx was the greatest economist of all time. Read "Capital" to understand.

How exactly is that supposed to be a confirmation/falsification of anything?

1) I am not a communist
2) This is a matter of sociology, not economy.
3) This has nothing to do with the scientific nature of current economics.
4) You are using a logical fallacy. Coherence or value does not imply existence.

Come on, user. I know austrian economics is retarded, but calling hayek ignorant of economics is a bit too much.

>leftard gets btfo
>"it's actually really complicated, but i'm not going to explain why and just smugly dismiss your argument ^_^"

He needs to explain why economics is more complicated than a meme?

I'm pretty sure the essence of science is looking for causation and trying to use empirical means to learn how systems work.

There appears to be a strong negative correlation between command economics and economic well being.

This isn't to say that I'm a Friedman fag or even right wing, but in any actual STEM field, shit like communism is going to be ignored, because the point of the field is to find facts, not discuss feelings.

>There appears to be a strong negative correlation between command economics and economic well being.
That's false. For example, South Korea had the per capita income of a subsaharan country until the 50s and became developed in a few decades with an extremely interventionist economy. We can agree that a free market is better than a badly commanded economy, or that interventionism might be better if limited.

>This isn't to say that I'm a Friedman fag or even right wing, but in any actual STEM field, shit like communism is going to be ignored
Communism has nothing to do with command economies.

>command economics and keynesian economics are the same thing

no

>Communism has nothing to do with command economies

Don't you have a helicopter ride or a Sanders rally or something to go to?

>no
The South Korean model wasn't keynesian. The government actively interfered in the allocation of resources, they didn't stimulate aggregate demand.

>Don't you have a helicopter ride or a Sanders rally or something to go to?
Nice meem, cool to see you are on your quest to "find facts, not discuss feelings".

all the famous economists are the modern equivalent of prophets, spew bullshit 24/7 and when they get one thing right on accident they're a genius

>throwing around the word "marketing"

Are you retarded?

I like how all the economic decisions in South Korea were made by a state planning bureau, and there were rigid price controls.

OH WAIT

It's almost like state capitalism and socialism are two different things.

>Nice meem, cool to see you are on your quest to "find facts, not discuss feelings".

Does this look like an academic setting to you? Do you see a .edu in the URL up there.

You had best square your ass away and start shitting me Tiffany cufflinks or I will definitely fuck you up.

>I like how all the economic decisions in South Korea were made by a state planning bureau
Kinda, there were regular public-private meeting where investments were determined.
In case you didn't get the point, my response wasn't aimed to defend command economies, i was pointing out that there isn't a "negative correlation between command economics and economic well being", at least not a linear one.

>It's almost like state capitalism and socialism are two different things.
I don't know what your point is.

My point being there's a reason academia ignores certain economic theories.

Because they don't work.

This is incidentally why the flat earth society doesn't get any of the good seats at geology conferences.

It's a pseudoscience. I've seen economists like Sir Alfred Sherman admitting that if your an economist who is uncertain in your economic thoughts, you're out of the job. Economics is not rooted in the natural world, it's rooted in the human mind, which is chaotic and complex.

>fedora dog
thats clearly a tophat you knob

I don't even know what economic theories you are refering to, and i'm a major in economics. In any case, economics is closer to psychoanalysis than it is to geology, epistemologically speaking.

The main economic theory doesn't work and yet current academia doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

This is the only "scientific" field in which this is actually a thing. The only one. Most economic journals won't accept articles that are not written according to the liberal paradigm. Most non-liberal economists, except the absolute top tier ones, will have trouble actually landing a chair.

Once again, this is not how academia works. Science is supposed to encourage criticism, because it has the balls to answer them. Because it NEEDS to answer them in order to develop.

Oh here we go again

Do you even know what marketing is?