I had to take this enviro Econ class last year, and the professor was insistent that it was a hard science. I wanted to ask him to then explain the unifying theory which ties Econ into the laws of physics, but I held my tongue because I needed the grade and he had already called me a conspiracy theorist in class (instead of addressing the point I made concerning the extraction of raw materials during the colonial era in Asia, specifically that it was unwelcomed by the locals.)
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Boeing put “economists” in charge of the engineers, and now they have a plane that regularly kills people.
And now, the actual science done by the EPA etc, is being burned to the ground.
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economists ≠ finance guys
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Like it or not, science can’t do everything.
Science is more than what goes on in laboratories. It’s a way of thinking. It’s accepting that opinions need to be based on observations that can be repeated by others. And that opinions need to change not because of personal or political belief, but because new data are available which makes another opinion more probable of being true. Some parts of the humanities, like history, rely on this (at least ideally), others, such as literary criticism do not. Things like cultural anthropology are somewhere in between.
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Millions of professionals all over the world rely on making millions of correct microeconomic predictions in practical settings everyday in the normal course of running their business, so it is clearly not junk science. The frustration most people have with economics is that the economy is made to seem like an unwieldy, mythical beast that supposed experts are unable to predict or control. In reality, the economy and economics is straight-forward; the perception of the economy as a force of nature, that cannot and should not be tamed is the result of years of neoclassical orthodoxy on matter:
Friedman and the neoclassicals set the stage for the rubbishing of economics study and research when the Friedmanists began to claim the stagflation of the 70s “disproved” Keynes and began preaching supply-side nonsense as an alternative. Prior to that, Keynesian fiscal policy stabilized the US economy fairly reliably, but when it couldn’t react to both unemployment AND rising inflation (normally at odds in Keynesian models) this set the stage for Friedman to swoop in and – not, you know, build on and update Keynes’ models – but to throw them out altogether and claim that stagflation was proof that the economy cannot and should not ever be controlled using tools like government fiscal and monetary policy. Only businesses (the supply-side) and their decisions about what and when to sell and who to hire should influence the economy. This would be like modern physicists claiming that Isaac Newton should be totally disregarded, and that gravity is created by trees hurling apples toward the Earth.
Obviously, none of the neoclassical predictions came true under any flavors (Thatcherism, Reaganomics, trickle-down, austerity, so-on) but Friedman and his bad research were propped up by the wealthy because the ideologies served them. It doesn’t help that, in my opinion, the economics orthodoxy is notoriously craven and prefer being seen as correct than interesting; Keynesians allowed themselves to be cowed by neoclassical thought when they should’ve known better and themselves instead of revising Keynes, dived head first into the circle jerk of proving supply-side. The result is an economy that never lived up to the promises made by supposed experts, but that’s because the promises were disingenuine to begin with. Supply-side worked very well for its backers. Remember: the economy is working – just not for you.
Still, if the critique is that economics is not a “real science” because it’s not insulated from this kind of influence, I don’t think it’s unique in that regard. Remember when were collectively fooled that “low-fat, high-carb” diets were the way to go, resulting in a generational obesity epidemic? Depending on the decade you were born in, eggs or breastmilk was either going to kill you or was crucial for your diet. So maybe that’s how the economy is perceived by non-economists.
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WOW! Really? I’m glad you explained that to me, since I was entirely unaware of that.
You’ve changed everything for me… thanks on wise one for opening my eyes to the fact that I was an ignorant fool!!! /s
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Science is what goes on in a laboratory- engineering is what goes on in the world.
Neither really tells you why you do something or what value an action has.
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That’s the problem. Most of economics is based on less overall reproducibility than literary criticism.
Literary criticism very often offers theories that other critics are invited to test. It’s not all theory, but it’s much more than you seem to be giving it credit for. Maybe it’s just not your field.
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If I wanted to make an accurate analogy to economics I think it would be that I have no apples, because there is another guy who technically owns all the apples, and that’s actually good for me if I was only smart enough to understand.
Sure, it’s not unique in that regard, but several of us in this thread have studied economics and that afactual nonsense that props up rich people is taught in universities as fact as recently as a few years ago (certainly years after the 2008 crash). See my 2+2=5 post above. I just have trouble taking seriously a discipline where the best anyone can do to defend it is to say, “Look, don’t judge us by our ascendant school of thought.”
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Yeah, but we don’t need that! That’s pseudo-intellectual bullshit! /s
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No, I can not explain. I’ll have to find a person.
It’s not a hard science so no. They can only make a best guess. There are more prepared to tell you what shouldn’t be done.
Economics not being a hard science is what makes it hard. Newtonian physics is easy in comparison. In this space you will find many scientists whether physicists, mathematicians, chemists, materials experts and the like. Current day economics is probably a NP-hard problem.
If you check with everyone here who thinks economics is bullshit, I don’t think you’ll find one person who thinks that “the economy” is an easy problem to “solve”. Instead, the complaint is that economists keep acting like they do know how to run things. And I hear about how hard problems are only as a dodge to explain why other people’s solutions won’t work.
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And I have more respect for economists who acknowledge that uncertainty, just as I have more respect for people who study political science when they acknowledge they can’t make concrete predictions about how an election is going to unfold or how the voters will respond to a particular candidate.
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Sure, it’s not unique in that regard, but several of us in this thread have studied economics and that afactual nonsense that props up rich people is taught in universities as fact as recently as a few years ago (certainly years after the 2008 crash). See my 2+2=5 post above. I just have trouble taking seriously a discipline where the best anyone can do to defend it is to say, “Look, don’t judge us by our ascendant school of thought
I wouldn’t say it’s “afactual”, but a lot of bad ideas based on a lot of questionable research found its way into textbooks (chances are if you’ve gotten your degree in the last 20 years you’ve had to read one of former Bush advisor Greg Mankiw’s textbooks on econ fundamentals). Friedman’s ideas were based on what happened under Pinochet’s Chile, for example – not exactly a viable use case for most world economies. Furthermore, being part of our school’s economic research committee, I noticed how relatively often groups like the Koch-backed Cato Institute offered grants or study opportunities to econ majors compared to other types of orgs.
So in a way your assertion is true, I guess: mainstream economics discourse is kinda comparable to getting all your music from the radio. The biggest research projects and thinkers are very beholden to the very wealthy. You have to go to the fringes to find interesting ideas or the broader scope the field can encompass, which stretches beyond macroeconomic forecasting.
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In defense of economists, most never want to be in situations where they have to make definitive predictions about something as vast as the macroeconomy (my old professor’s favorite joke was an economist’s favorite answer to any question is “it depends!”). The trouble is most of the value economists have to non-economists is precisely in this capacity.
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I remember once reading a splendid sentence. It went something like ‘Rocket science is quite easy; you can teach almost anyone to calculate an orbit. It’s rocket engineering that’s hard’.
(which has fuck-all to do with economics, yes, I know)
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Somewhat related to the discussion of economics:
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Try here for a preprint
still have to login, but it doesn’t cost money.
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