Holla Forums, are university economics courses all corrupt? Considering the fact that this "competition! The invisible hand! Supply and demand fixes everything!" mentality is taught in undergrad courses, is "academic Economics" unreliable? Do the models work? Is it even science? Is it biased towards the capitalist perspective?
What do you think?
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Well, all the basic courses are libertarian tier, but most economists actually realize that their theories don't always work that way in practice. Empirical economics is a thing.
In the alchemy of finance soros admits the whole thing is speculation in the first ten or so pages.
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It's pretty ideological, yeah.
Yes. All it teaches you is how to become a gambler on the stock market or excuse the status quo in a masturbatory, celebratory way.
Unless they teach Marxian or Post-Keyensian, yeah it's pretty corrupt. Though it's fun to take the classes and expose how indefensible their theories are. The prof might hate you, and some of your classmates, but what's important is the planting of the idea that bourgeois econ is horseshit on eager young minds.
I don't really know why microeconomics actually exists.
Macroeconomics is economics of the nation and on a large scale, the only shit that actually matters. The field right now is almost the reverse of what it was 50 years ago and it's bizarre because the research now is worse than it had been.
Right now the predominant school is neo-classical or the keynesian infused classical theory. It's not actually keynesian but they had to add a few things they couldn't really deny, but of course do it in a bad way, there are left and right strands but at best they're all attempting to 'make capitalism better' or something to that effect.
The only good economics is post-keynesian, I mean I don't know much about marxian economics outside of arguments about LVT but the recent stuff done by Steve Keen in modelling the economy macro-scale is much more accurate than the crowning but now defunct glory of DSGE.
Staples of neo-classical economics that's just rubbish and heavily ideological.
1. Free Market Good
Literally doesn't exist, all markets came to be created through absolute violence. The early uses of coins were to help feed armies so they didn't pillage the wrong towns. The monarch had levied tax on his people, he then decides he will pay the army in coins so that there would be demand for surplus production from the people. He tells the people now the tax will be paid in coin instead of your surplus production. The people then work to feed the large growing army and do so more efficiently so that they can perhaps of their own accord gain wealth. The monarch of course not caring how that wealth is distributed, only that the tax is paid and so this creates strife between the people and new class divisions arise. Main point being that all markets have always been a way to hide violence.
2. Free Trade Good
Straight up nonsense, the only way to build up industry is through asymmetric trade policy. Building foreign exchange reserves to buy foreign capital and reverse engineer it to enter high profit markets. All historical data will show this.
3. Austerity
Decreasing government debt just increases tax payer debt, finance capital loves this. Get people indebted and maybe you can have slavery again.
4. DSGE
Literally been tested and is completely false.
federalreserve.gov
5. Savings = Credit
Nonsense, banks make money out of thin air the way governments can do the same. MMT or bust.
6. Private good, Public bad
Not true, this one largely depends on time and experience. There's a reason banks and failing industry get nationalized. Central planning works, the fact that it didn't produce utopia in the USSR has a lot to do with external and internal factors which were largely political. The high growth companies that are always used to discredit the communist attempt basically did the same thing except they were being supported by the United States which was freely building their industry, literally communism, and giving them access to markets. See: Marshal Plan and Japanese Aid. Hilarious that Britain and the United States had to send ships in to ask nicely for open markets, who's free to choose?
Willing to discuss other points not mentioned to explore how conventional narratives are ideologically fuelled if anyone wants to.
Economics doesn't teach you anything but useless macro theory regarding the stock market. If you want to become a gambler on the stock market then study finance.
meant countries*
This sounds extremely interesting. Only problem is I'm having a tough time following you.
I guess my biggest questions are about the free market narrative that AnCaps and libertarians and such always preach. Basically the Adam Smith stuff about how if everyone pursues their own self interest and competes, everyone is better off. The narrative of "Free market will fix it." "The consumer has the freedom to choose" "Well, if your employer is treating you like shit, you can just go start your own company" etc.
I run into these points countless times when discussing with people on the right. Can you tell me what's wrong with that line of thinking?
Not "corrupt" in the strictest sense, but couched in the bourgeois mentality and paradigms of [the current year]
Of course it's unreliable. Economics in academia assumes that people are quote "rational" beings (Read: selfish).
In reality, most people here know that people aren't "rational" in this sense- if they were, Ayn Rand would be correct. But Stirner is obviously more correct.
This is because empathy and altruism is a part of ordinary society, and something that can be nurtured based on different environments. If it couldn't I wouldn't be a communist. I'd be a market socialist.
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Well, I am about to find out how bullshit one particular economics course is. My wife is taking an economics class, and she was given an assignment to write an essay detailing her idea to eliminate homelessness. Of course, we all know the answer to that particular problem.
I suspect that the assignment was intended to be a Kobyashi Maru in which students are unable to determine an economically viable solution. As such, she was having difficulty with the assignment and asked me for an idea.
Now, I make it a point to never talk about politics or theory with my wife. Maybe it was a poor choice on my part, but I wanted to avoid influencing her opinion too greatly. Let her make her own journey.
When she told me what her assignment was, and in particular the part where she had to explain what we would have to "sacrifice" to eliminate homelessness, it sounded a little too much like propaganda, so I told her that the way to end homelessness is to base ownership on use rather than on property deeds. That got her looking up the definitions of private property, personal property, and public property. Then she started asking questions like "Why would people work without wages?" and "How does collective ownership work?" Now her paper concludes that homelessness can only be solved through global revolution. I look forward to reading her teacher's feedback.
How long did that transition take? That seems pretty quick
High effort post thanks
Good work lad
Do you mind posting again with the feedback, Comrade? Now you have me looking forward to it, too.
lol, tell that to the Soviet Union.
This is a glorious post!
cap plz?
This is a glorious post!
cap plz?
Oh, this shit gonna be good!
You did more for socialism than anyone in Leftypol that day.
You mean the nomenclature that became as shit as capitalism and never went beyond state capitalism, without the ability to make credid (debt) into money, like the US, and thus the economy collapsed?
Because it's absolute bullshit and butchering of what Adam Smith said on the subject.
In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was all about regulation of capitalists. Not one libertarian or ancap can read what he said and come to some other conclusion. What people do is read the first few pages then surmise the rest of the book from that.
Smith had TWO books about capitalism: Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments.
He didn't want merchants to go to other countries because if they did that, they'd do what's in their own best interests and ignore the nation they left behind. This argument is in Chapter 2 of WoN:
econlib.org
Look at the last part. He's saying "Yeah, he goes with his own interest, we're fucked"
So to sum this up, they preach Adam Smith, but none of them read him.
You got one good response, I'll try to add a little.
The reason that free to choose is nonsense is the same reason why in the law we don't consider you liable for doing something under gun point but rather consider that the actions of the one with the gun.
You're not free to choose because any other avenue for your livelihood has been taken away from you, and is constantly taken away from you through the apparatuses of violence.
The choice they're talking about is who's slave you will be, in fact all freedom in liberal democracy is the product of the space provided for us through the competition between multiple powers.
See for a little history: en.wikipedia.org
Free market will fix it?
It's just social-Darwinism. The reason the market is efficient is because anyone who isn't is dead, sure. This only means everyone needs to be as efficient as everyone else not that they need to be maximally efficient. It's fine to have free markets for some but disastrous for others. Not really a case of good/bad.
The question of liberalization for growth, not directly the question of deregulation on a national scale, has empirically examination we can look at:
Chile as a case example, since it's the neo-liberal 'golden child'.
citizen.org
IMF effect on other nations:
pic related: un.org
The case of Botswana, the negative case on IMF(Botswana rejected the IMF):
en.wikipedia.org
In a word what's wrong with it is it ignores power, not least because it's empirically false, free markets don't exist - markets always require a state.
Lastly market liberalization only has two effects.
Increase exploitation, which results in higher productivity.
Increase inequality.
So there can be growth yes(mostly short term), but there is no or meagre development which is what actually matters.
There's data to back this up but I have to go to class, you should be able to find out on your own.
This. When you have a capitalism in it's 'pure' form you can achieve some really astounding growth rates and genuinely rising standards of living for more technologically backwards societies. But once modernization is complete the contradictions become clear.
It was ridiculously quick. More than anything, I think she wanted to have a viable answer to her professor's trick question. Righteous indignation encouraged her along.
Still, she seemed to enjoy Richard Wolf's article and videos (the best babby's first Marxist theory), and she surfed the results for "socialism" on EBSCO for a while. She has never been overly political, so I doubt that she will get all Lenin over it.
Will do.
Saying revolution is the answer isn't much better than having an algorithm with a step somewhere that says, "A miracle occurs." And I say that as someone who wishes for a revolution.
Here is how to deal with homeless people: How do we increase the supply of shelter? How can we make it more attractive to increase the supply of something in general? The usual answer is taxing it less, and maybe subsidizing it.
But you can make supplying something more attractive by taxing it more. That is, when there are many people posessing something without using it much, a tax on posession can make it more attractive to let go of that thing. Now the higher-tax idea can work for stuff that already exists, but it makes it less attractive to produce more of it, so that can't be a great general-purpose answer. However, when it comes to one part of the shelter question, it is clear that there is something about it that is not produced: the land the buildings stand on (there are a few human-made land constructs like some Japanese airport, but let's not split hairs over these exceptional cases). A high tax on land itself and the value of location, and not taxing the improvements by the owner is the answer.
Depending on what regions we are talking about, restrictive zoning rules could also be an issue. Making a distinction of strictly business or strictly residential is pretty crazy and unnecessarily shrinks what is available for shelter.
Now, having a supply of homes is one thing, wanting to rent out to homeless people is another. This could be dealt with in a similar way as pollution isssues can be dealt with: Eg, there is an aggregate target to produce 10 % less of some sort of pollution, and everybody is forced to do their 10 % reduction part towards meeting it. Since this can be much easier for some actors than for others, and it's really the aggregate that matters in the end, the individual responsibility of this or that percentage reduction can just be an initial allocation of duties, and actors can be allowed to trade them. In analogy to that, people owning land could have the duty by law to give shelter to some number of people based on the amount they own (physically speaking or market value or a mix, maybe?), but again our goal would be all about the aggregate. So don't imagine being forced to provide shelter yourself on your piece of land, somebody doing more than their initial assignment would get paid by those doing less than theirs.
So much this. Ricardo and Smith are never actually looked at and are used as an almost cult like book of psalms.
Most modern economics is comprised of fairly complex mathematical and theoretical systems. But when you get to the bone of these theories you realize that while they are complex, (and due to my autism entertaining) they simply do not reflect reality. For example in one of my advanced international market classes I had a pretty heated debate with the professor over the Greek crisis. I argued they should default because it would help both Greece and Europe in the long run (due to the EU's defacto peg exchange rate it has within its sphere). About half way through our argument I realized that we were just yelling equations and models at each other that vaguely related to the subject at hand, and really didn't reflect it at all.
A Cap n Trade system for housing homeless people looks like a good idea. Perhaps it'd be better to have a progressively higher percentage like the tax brackets (so from 5% to 15% or whatever). However you might see some really nasty cultural elements erupt with that. "I don't want any of them filthy niggers on my property" or something like that. How can we fix that?
Capped and saved user
We already have sufficient supply. For every homeless person in my city there are five vacant houses or apartments. It does not matter how many homes there are if the people who need them are unable to afford them. You know that unemployment and underemployment are functions of capitalism. We can not expect that the unemployed and the underemployed will have access to homes until private property is eliminated.
That is unless you want to regulate traffic flow, build and maintain infrastructure, or enforce fire and safety codes.
Yeah, those traffic peaks are great. In the morning, everybody drives from residential area A to work area B, and in the evening, everybody drives from B back to A. That's the only way it could be.
Can you post?
this please :