These people are our future

[Lyric]

You'd think so, but unfortunately it's not true with econ. There's way way too much financial and political incentive behind it.

Besides, the Hoover Institute kills it.

Also, what he said isn't entirely wrong. That's part of the play of propaganda. The Bush Admin did express some incentive for easier mortgages and stuff, but that's only a tiny role, and misdirects from the vast majority of what else was going on. When the banks bribe and commit fraud, you can't say it was because the Fed lowered their interest rates


You mean economists without political, financial, or corporate conflicts of interest? Have at it, Hoss. Please find me credible economists who think the innocent ol banks were forced by big bad government to make hundreds of billions by overextending themselves and committing legalized fraud

Are you saying that no legitimate economists are conservative or libertarian? You don't think there are two legitimate sides to this ageless debate?

Are you really saying that all laissez-faire economists including Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Arthur Burns, Friedrich Hayek, Homer Jones, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Simons, and George Stigler are all puppets with an evil agenda?

[wufwugy]

Are you saying that no legitimate economists are conservative or libertarian?

Pretty much. This isn't a damn philosophy debate. It's science. Observational and demonstrable evidence. "Conservative economists" is a phrase that exists because people don't even know what fucking economics means. You can't have liberal physics or libertarian chemistry, likewise any politically delineated econ is just as retarded.

You don't think there are two legitimate sides to this ageless debate?

There's more than two, usually. Just don't fool yourself into thinking stupidity is a side. Creationism isn't a "side" in a biology debate, likewise "making shit up that is empirically refuted" isn't a side in an econ debate.

We know for a fucking fact that the policy that is most responsible for the Crisis of 08 was deregulatory. This is not debatable because the scientific observation has already been declared. Only in conservative libertarian fantasy land do we get to fabricate made-up garbage where the Crisis of 08 was magically caused by increasing regulation.

Two examples: we know for a fact that in 1999 Congress deregulated certain mergers without which the Crisis of 08 would not have even been possible. We know for a fact that the SEC deregulating leverage caps for certain banks played an enormous role in the creation and severity of the Crisis

30 minutes on google is enough time to find the wealth of proof that the claim that we've been over-regulating the banks is complete and utter trash. But don't tell that to somebody who doesn't understand the difference between empirical observation and making stuff up

Are you really saying that all laissez-faire economists including Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Arthur Burns, Friedrich Hayek, Homer Jones, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Simons, and George Stigler are all puppets with an evil agenda?

Joke list is a joke. Half these guys died before a huge chunk of enormously important economic results arose, and wannabe econ Austrians are a laughingstock for a reason. We're not dealing with philosophy. We're dealing with hard science. One reason this is difficult for people to understand is that in most sciences we have laboratories with the proper controls, but in econ we lack proper controls and society itself is the laboratory. But this doesn't mean it's not just as much of a science as biology, and it doesn't mean that instead of analyzing available empirical data, we can just make shit up.

[Lyric]

Pretty much. This isn't a damn philosophy debate. It's science. Observational and demonstrable evidence. "Conservative economists" is a phrase that exists because people don't even know what fucking economics means. You can't have liberal physics or libertarian chemistry, likewise any politically delineated econ is just as retarded.


There's more than two, usually. Just don't fool yourself into thinking stupidity is a side. Creationism isn't a "side" in a biology debate, likewise "making shit up that is empirically refuted" isn't a side in an econ debate.

We know for a fucking fact that the policy that is most responsible for the Crisis of 08 was deregulatory. This is not debatable because the scientific observation has already been declared. Only in conservative libertarian fantasy land do we get to fabricate made-up garbage where the Crisis of 08 was magically caused by increasing regulation.

Two examples: we know for a fact that in 1999 Congress deregulated certain mergers without which the Crisis of 08 would not have even been possible. We know for a fact that the SEC deregulating leverage caps for certain banks played an enormous role in the creation and severity of the Crisis

30 minutes on google is enough time to find the wealth of proof that the claim that we've been over-regulating the banks is complete and utter trash. But don't tell that to somebody who doesn't understand the difference between empirical observation and making stuff up

Joke list is a joke. Half these guys died before a huge chunk of enormously important economic results arose, and wannabe econ Austrians are a laughingstock for a reason. We're not dealing with philosophy. We're dealing with hard science. One reason this is difficult for people to understand is that in most sciences we have laboratories with the proper controls, but in econ we lack proper controls and society itself is the laboratory. But this doesn't mean it's not just as much of a science as biology, and it doesn't mean that instead of analyzing available empirical data, we can just make shit up.

When people being talking to me about proven facts and insisting that that science is settled and that there is no more debate alarm bells go off for me. Science is always open to new ideas, is constantly questioning reality, and nothing is ever permanently settled in science.

If you want to tell me that it is generally accepted that gravity works like this and that econ works like that -- fine -- but I think it's inappropriate to insist that the entire libertarian and conservative viewpoint regarding economics is a fairy-tale.

If you grew up in the Libertarian "echo chamber" I would imagine you know that the liberal viewpoint and its pundits are viewed with equal disdain. Krugman is considered to be an especially obvious or obnoxious puppet because he wrote a textbook that explicitly teaches the opposite of the viewpoint of his articles.

Further, it is strange that you refuse to speak about economics in simple island terms, with one or five people. It's a simple starting point that we can all understand, and an easy way to see how wealth, money, and economics works.

You claim that it does not apply, but have not offered any reasons. I have only seen a lot of arm waving, insisting that your viewpoint is correct and that libertarians are like creationists, and that economics is so complex that we can't begin to understand it on its most basic level no matter how hard we try.

[CoccoBill]

Further, it is strange that you refuse to speak about economics in simple island terms, with one or five people. It's a simple starting point that we can all understand, and an easy way to see how wealth, money, and economics works.

You claim that it does not apply, but have not offered any reasons. I have only seen a lot of arm waving, insisting that your viewpoint is correct and that libertarians are like creationists, and that economics is so complex that we can't begin to understand it on its most basic level no matter how hard we try.

I think this has mostly to do with the fact that a simplistic island scenario does not represent the incredible complexity of modern economics in any meaningful way. The basic laws that might govern a closed limited basic hand-trade system just do not apply when compared to a world full of intricate structures based not only on simple value designations and work effort, but derivatives, economies of scale, special interests, government interaction, lobbying and so on and so forth. The sheer complexity makes the whole irreducible to a point, since the laws governing this behemoth are vastly different to the model governing the basic interaction. The functionality of the free markets on a global scale is based on some basic assumptions that seem to be incorrect: it assumes that all consumers behave rationally, which many studies have shown is not true.

[Lyric]

I think this has mostly to do with the fact that a simplistic island scenario does not represent the incredible complexity of modern economics in any meaningful way. The basic laws that might govern a closed limited basic hand-trade system just do not apply when compared to a world full of intricate structures based not only on simple value designations and work effort, but derivatives, economies of scale, special interests, government interaction, lobbying and so on and so forth. The sheer complexity makes the whole irreducible to a point, since the laws governing this behemoth are vastly different to the model governing the basic interaction. The functionality of the free markets on a global scale is based on some basic assumptions that seem to be incorrect: it assumes that all consumers behave rationally, which many studies have shown is not true.

I agree that the modern world economy is complex, but to understand that complexity we can start with one man and continue adding people and complexity until we arrive at an understanding of the modern world economy. There is no reason that we can't start small and build on that, understanding one point at a time until we arrive at credit default swaps.

Claiming that the laws of economics change when the island grows to a certain undetermined size seems illogical to me. It's still a bunch of people on an island (earth), and they are still interacting with each other in similar ways. If anything, let's build the island slowly and see if the laws change at some point.