[send_oil_please]

Assuming for the sake of discussion that Economics is not a metaphysical religion, even though some Economist do act like Fundementalist christian Creationists when it comes to the subject of Non-renewable energy sources and their faith in the Market, Politics, Science and Technology.

Economics is a relatively young "semi-hard" science (compared say to Astronomy or physics).

So What is the Track Record of Economics ? How have their experiments in Real Time faired over the last few centuries.

Would you Take the Word of the Economist over that of the Hard Sciences on the Issue of Energy? Would you Take the Word of the Economist over their very dismal Track Record the past few centuries when it comes to Your Currency? Or when considering how they "managed" so many Economies (past and present) so poorly, including many today?


Just go glance at the table of contents at Amazon for books like The Penniless Billionaires or Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Economics has a VERY checkerd past in the Fiat Monetary System alone. In many Past Cases the Economists grossly Overinflated Claims of value of Foreign Lands with Utopian Futures (sometimes little more than chunks of swamp in the Southern US etc ... and their investors usually learned that Pie In The Sky is not ...)

One note In Defence of the Economists Past and Present - they were almost always sincere and did the best they could do. Very rarely were they involved in Big Conspiracies and were not out to "hussle" an entire continent or single country. Tthere is always some corruption during growth in any economic system, and many minor villians that contribute to the collapse. But usually their are some sort of Physical Limits reached that could not be avoided - and that the ECONOMISTS did not see coming ... because they are Not Scientists (well, most aren't IMHO anyway) and because the got Complacent and thought they were Wave Makers instead of Wave Riders (Fischer again).

(apologies if this post belongs somewhere else, I'm easily confused)

[Kod]

I just wrote my econ midterm, so I'm swinging more toward religion right now.

The simplistic models we use bear little resemblance to the real world. It's a science of over-generalizations, to say the least.

[send_oil_please]

>>>"involved in Big Conspiracies and were not out to "hussle" an entire continent or single country"<<<

Ok, wait, better clarify now... usually they started out sincere and believed they were performing some economic miracle. Once the Masses accepted the Delusion, it took on a life of it's own and The Master Economist/Gubermints of the Day ended up being swept up in the hysteria and did in fact eventually "hussle" in feeble attempts to put off the inevitable. Usually they were hunted down and any ill-gotten booty returned to the peasants, along with some part of the Economist's Carcus as proof of payment (no barcode reciepts back then).

Sooo many parallels between past events and present ones... rhymes we should tell in the nurseries some day.

[send_oil_please]

That's one thing that always scares me in science (including the hard ones) - when they use "simplistic models" that do not yet have enough data or evidence to warrent putting into practice. Maybe we should have something like an FDA to oversee the FED etc, to make sure they aren't giving us badly doped up numbers and paper money and such (or suddenly hiding M3 money supply numbers etc... Behaviors suspiciously similar to many past Money Managers who failed miserably).

Just like the Green House/Global Warming effect - much good work to be done, but many scary model-based ideas from people who can't give high-probability weather forecast for any one city for more than 36 hours out...

[Quigley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('send_oil_please', 'J')ust like the Green House/Global Warming effect - much good work to be done, but many scary model-based ideas from people who can't give high-probability weather forecast for any one city for more than 36 hours out...

[send_oil_please]

Thanks Quigley (and Kod for that matter) for the reasonable responses on this topic.

I think climate and weather modeling are interdependant. The Two things that worry me about this are 1) the WASTED spending I personally am very familiar with in scientic research, and 2) some of the schemes being proposed that begin to enter the area of tinkering to try and remove and control levles of atmospheric gases like CO2 - I doubt the get the Right Knobs set at the Right Points.

How about they NOT try do that for a while - just focus on reductions, fine, but beyond thatn. These sorts of situations remind me of those where children find loaded guns and start playing with them...

Just ask the Deer population - or any DNR type effort... in general, when Homo Da Sap gets involved the situation resembles the "Lady who swallowed a fly.. I don't know why...".

I don't trust their schemes based on our incredible lack of knowledge in their fields. We know enough to Hurt Ourselves and that scares me - especially when people start acting desperate.

In the end I Think it will be a Mute Point.

When People are Hungry and Cold, and so are their children, they will not be worried about how many CO2 molecules they will be releasing for supper today.

The Fridge will be empty, the Furnace out of fuel, and The Greenies Will be out Back with a Measuring Stick to see if the Septic Tank is going to overflow This Year or Next... and then looking for edible roots and bugs later that same afternoon (we are talking geologic time here, so an afternoon is like... many months at least I guess).

Talk to a Desperate Third World Person and ask them if they give a flying sexual intercourse about "Global Warming" - or even if they ever heard of it? Probably was in their paper to, but they used it to start the Cow Dung on fire to cook their supper before they read that page.

[MrBill]

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry? I guess the less you understand finance & economics the better it is for me. Thanks.

Too bad that some of those issues you mentioned affect 5/6ths of the world's population and they are desperately poor for many reasons including their own and their own governments lack of understanding of finance & economics either.

You say you understand science? Then cost/benefit analysis should not be such a hard concept for you to grasp? I think the natural sciences, like biology follow the rules of supply & demand very closely when we talk about population expansion & contraction in response to environmental constraints? On the otherhand, economists use many of the same statistical tools and quantitative methods that engineers use to build 'real things'. As a matter of fact, the Black Scholes options pricing model was borrowed from the physics lab. It is just a variation of a dust particle expansion model.

Oh well, sleep it off and come back when you're sober, so we can have a real conversation.

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')As a matter of fact, the Black Scholes options pricing model was borrowed from the physics lab. It is just a variation of a dust particle expansion model.

[0mar]

Economics is little more than curve-fitting without experimental data. There are few theories on WHY a paticular equation fits a trend or even testing/validating the data. Because economics can't do experiments, they cannot deduce any sort of causation.

MrBill's post pretty much confirms that. Why is the Black-Sholes options pricing a variant of dust particle expansion? If you can answer this question, then you have pretty much refuted the above paragraph. Because to me, it just looks like curve-fitting to me. Slap in some numbers in Excel and hit the linear/exponential/etc regression button.

For the real sciences, the math isn't ad hoc. The math makes predictions which are either confirmed or not confirmed by empirical analysis. The math also makes predictions with regards to certain initial conditions. The math makes predictions about real life phenonemona. The math isn't presented as is, just to explain a certain event. And most importantly, the math often precedes the data. Many times, one derives an equation and then tests that equation with respect to the real world.

For economics, at least from what I've seen, the math is just there. It's a convienant way to express the behaviors. However, the math makes dubious predictions at best and can never be confirmed or not confirmed definatively.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MacG', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')As a matter of fact, the Black Scholes options pricing model was borrowed from the physics lab. It is just a variation of a dust particle expansion model.

[killJOY]

Economics is neither science nor religion.

Economics is a VAST BOARD GAME in which the players all agree to treat the RULES as if they were the LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.


"Popular Delusion" might be the more appropriate term. Most religions, no matter how cracked they all are, at least have the dignity to embrace poverty (even if adherents cannot abide by this).

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MacG', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')As a matter of fact, the Black Scholes options pricing model was borrowed from the physics lab. It is just a variation of a dust particle expansion model.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')wice in the same thread. Cool. Not everyone who pop a thread to HoF on his own...

[jaws]

We would never have achieved the level of wealth we have today (and that many people on this forum fear a collapse from) had the laws of economics not been researched and applied in the 19th century. The problem was that it was still an emerging science and that made room for some charlatans like Marx and Engels to screw up the world by telling people they could have something that they couldn't. Thus began the decline of economics from hard science to the total confusion it exists in today.

The experiments in socialism, despite being responsible for the calamity that befell Europe and subsequently the rest of the world in the mid-20th century, had to be somehow explained away as legitimate by the mainstream economics profession (most of whom were directly or indirectly employed by socialist governments). This was done by substituting voodoo for economics, which is what Keynes' General Theory provided, and then substituting math for economics, the first step as Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economics published sometime in the 1950's. Along with the nonsensical voodoo published by Keynes it was possible to explain away the existence of the Soviet Union and socialism despite the fact that the few incorruptible economists still following the classical method, such as F.A. Hayek and L. v. Mises, had declared that the Soviet Union was unsustainable and bound to collapse. Obviously the Soviet Union existed and, by all available accounts at the time, was hugely successful. The classical science of economics must have been wrong.

The reason that what is taught in Economics 101 has no relation to the real world is that a thorough inspection of the real world runs contrary to all of the government's policies today, and Economics 101 classes are provided by the government. The professors of Economics know what's best for them, continuing to justify their own jobs. The oldest have completely nonsensical theories. The youngest know nothing but math. I've had to deal with both. Those who are directly employed by government, like Alan Greenspan, also know what's best for them. To hell with the good of society. What matters is paycheck and pension.

[Zentric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'W')e would never have achieved the level of wealth we have today (and that many people on this forum fear a collapse from) had the laws of economics not been researched and applied in the 19th century. The problem was that it was still an emerging science and that made room for some charlatans like Marx and Engels to screw up the world by telling people they could have something that they couldn't. Thus began the decline of economics from hard science to the total confusion it exists in today.

The experiments in socialism, despite being responsible for the calamity that befell Europe and subsequently the rest of the world in the mid-20th century, had to be somehow explained away as legitimate by the mainstream economics profession (most of whom were directly or indirectly employed by socialist governments). This was done by substituting voodoo for economics, which is what Keynes' General Theory provided, and then substituting math for economics, the first step as Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economics published sometime in the 1950's. Along with the nonsensical voodoo published by Keynes it was possible to explain away the existence of the Soviet Union and socialism despite the fact that the few incorruptible economists still following the classical method, such as F.A. Hayek and L. v. Mises, had declared that the Soviet Union was unsustainable and bound to collapse. Obviously the Soviet Union existed and, by all available accounts at the time, was hugely successful. The classical science of economics must have been wrong.

The reason that what is taught in Economics 101 has no relation to the real world is that a thorough inspection of the real world runs contrary to all of the government's policies today, and Economics 101 classes are provided by the government. The professors of Economics know what's best for them, continuing to justify their own jobs. The oldest have completely nonsensical theories. The youngest know nothing but math. I've had to deal with both. Those who are directly employed by government, like Alan Greenspan, also know what's best for them. To hell with the good of society. What matters is paycheck and pension.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zentric', 'S')o, what I'm saying, as shown by what Jaws is saying, is that Economics is a religion, practiced by robots, who are unable to hone in on a point, and who blame others for their screw ups, yet will always gladly cash their paychecks and collect their pensions.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zentric', 'S')o, what I'm saying, as shown by what Jaws is saying, is that Economics is a religion, practiced by robots, who are unable to hone in on a point, and who blame others for their screw ups, yet will always gladly cash their paychecks and collect their pensions.

[seldom_seen]

Anything so detached from reality has to be based on religion or faith.

They like to use a bunch of fancy math to dress it up as "scientific" and a "rigorous discipline", but it's mostly smoke and mirrors.

Someone mentioned the black-sholes model. hah. The guys that invented that (or one of them) was part of Long Term Capital Management which almost collapsed the global bond market and had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve to the tune of billions.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')he economists that you read in the paper and press reports are obviously paid to say what they're saying, so don't assume they're saying the truth.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'S')o it all falls apart as soon as you mix people with money, which is rather a shame given that is what it's supposed to be about.