I believe Zaman is right. This is what economics has come to be about. It is not a science as it stands. It is not even worthy of being taught as such. It is just the political dogma of an elite dressed up as pseudo-science to maintain the status quo of privilege that a relative few enjoy.
Zaman was writing in Real-World Economics Review which is part of:
“Post-Autistic Economics Network”
Possibly too much weight being put on “post” there.
“Post-Autistic”? They’ve stopped being autistic?
per wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics “The post-autistic economics movement (French: autisme-économie),[1] or movement of students for the reform of economics teaching (French: mouvement des étudiants pour une réforme de l’enseignement de l’économie),[2] is a political movement that criticises neoclassical economics and advocates for pluralism in economics”
“The French term autisme has an older meaning and signifies “abnormal subjectivity, acceptance of fantasy rather than reality”. However, post-autistic economists also “assert that neoclassical economics has the characteristics of an autistic child”.[4]”
put simply in my opinion – current economics rubbishes the ideas and suggestions of idiots like the potato. As the potato can never be wrong, current economic theory and the real world must be wrong. Let’s invent new economics that proves him right (even though it clashes with the real world results)
should note that asad zaman is a devout muslim from pakistan. As such he believes mopaedo flew to heaven on a winged horse and that a slaver, rapist, thief and allround sociopath was the perfect man.
If he’s talking about macro I can only wholeheartedly agree with him.
As for micro, it’s a useful historical subject. It can explain what & why things happened. But prediction… You’re trying to predict an essentially chaotic system without necessary knowing what factors might influence it. It’s a guide, not a recipe book.
It is just the political dogma of an elite dressed up as pseudo-science to maintain the status quo of privilege that a relative few enjoy.
You can exchange economics for all kinds of things there. That conspiracy conclusion (which isn’t entirely unreasonable given shitty human beings) is an easy default when you don’t understand why things happen. Lefties have their capitalists and robber barons; the right have Jews and globohomo. And the crossovers give us Jewish Nazis with corporate deep state biolabs all bribed by the Chinese Communist Party.
But reality is often just an incomprehensible chaotic, weird and pathetic combination multiple frothing interests. We fear not being able to predict the future; we fear it more than predictable monsters. So we invent them.
Quite insightful coming from a man who jumps from one cock arsed theory to the next, often contradictory, and dresses up the theories with pseudo scientific bullshit. And is not worthy of teaching it.
I’m with Robert Shiller, 2013 Laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. “One problem with economics is that it is necessarily focused on policy, rather than discovery of fundamentals … My belief is that economics is somewhat more vulnerable than the physical sciences to models whose validity will never be clear, because the necessity for approximation is much stronger than in the physical sciences, especially given that the models describe people rather than magnetic resonances or fundamental particles … (Yet) economics has an important quantitative side, which cannot be escaped. The challenge has been to combine its mathematical insights with the kinds of adjustments that are needed to make its models fit the economy’s irreducibly human element.” That is why the Department of Economics is the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/robert-j–shilleron-whether-he-is-a-scientist
PJF
But reality is often just an incomprehensible chaotic, weird and pathetic combination multiple frothing interests. We fear not being able to predict the future; we fear it more than predictable monsters. So we invent them.
And send most of our military equipment in support of confronting such ‘monsters’ to a far off land of which we know nothing?
Moqifen
I did wonder if the fact that the author of that quoted article, Mr. Zaman would have his brother put to death for his sexual preferences was less important to him than the fact it accorded with his own conception of ‘mainstream’ economics….
@VP – I doubt that even the potato would be that heartless, though if vermin was somehow involved I’d not be so certain – from his point of view – “the greater good” and all that.
I doubt that Zaman would look on the potato all that enthusiastically anyway.
1) He’s a non believer so on a par to a field animal 2) He’s a declared Christian so an idolator 3) his wife earns more money than him as a GP -so he’s inferior to a woman who in Islamic scripture is half as intelligent as a man 4) He’s a twin and the other twin is gay – got to be dodgy- am i right?
I doubt Zaman would be joining him any time soon in getting banned from the nearest hostelry
It occurred, regarding economics as a science. How would you regard physics if half its practitioners were wedded to the phlogiston model?
I’d think they were chemists.
All right Tim, picky. But if you want to posit phlogiston you have to discard all of atomic theory. Phlogiston has to have negative mass.
Which is basically where you are with Marx.
If you want the fantasy fiction logic behind that. If you posit some elements are phlogisticated, that deals with sulphur & carbon. Although sulphur must be pure phlogiston*, since it leaves no residue. But that doesn’t explain the flammable metals. Because the mass of the solid oxide residue is greater than the unburned metal whilst the air they were burnt must be fully phlogisticated, because it won’t support the burning of carbon/sulphur. So you need both a phlogiston & an anti-phlogiston with negative mass.
*So to the alchemy of it. The inflammable metals are lighter, because they contain more anti-phlogiston & non-flammable heavier because they contain less. Now comes the tricky bit. If you can combine sulphur with lead you get gold. The phlogiston of the sulphur counteracts the residual phlogiston in the lead & it increases in mass. The Law of Similarity confirms it by the colour. All you need is Philosopher’s Stone to catalyse the reaction. Simples.
See the similarity with macro-economics?