Games Economists Play
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
As a result they chum with people in power and help guide them using statistics and forcasting.
The problem is, economists are not all-knowing oracles and they often get things wrong or they advocate for a path which yields unintended consequences, sometimes regressing our states and cultures in the wrong direction.
Thier influence lasts generations, and they often may slip out of any accountability because they have no shame blaming their predicessors while promising that thier new models and forecasts are more complete and should still be listened to when making very political decisions on how to spend tax money.
Whether intentional or not economists often ignore or dismiss side effects of their actions. This means things like class struggles or the environment are not part of the equation upfront and therefore either become neglected at best or irriversibly changed for worse.
They focus solely on a few sources of capital instead.
As for myself, I now use the "8 forms of capital" described in the following post as my lense when making decisions, monitary or otherwise:
1. No. Bad. Things went bad because country did not do as economists said. 2. Yes. Bad. Things went bad because country did not deal with past policies that economists don't like. 3. No. Good. Things went well because of past policies economists do like. 4. No. Bad. Things went bad because country did not listen to the economists.
Economists are always right. There's always enough of the ideal and the non ideal going on to establish the desired causality, and negligible chance of exact recurrence.
I only take economists seriously when they talk densely and fluently about history and its complexities. I recommend Mark Blyth.
Type 2 chaotic system. Economists never know wtf they are talking about. They are speaking about history. You can not make conclusions from history. The more dense your non-sense, the easier it is to bullshit. You have a pool of economists, you are a rich person or you are a political party that subscribes to certain political myths. From the pool you find the guy that says what you want to hear, they become your champion. The news papers that support you start talking about them. The universities that they grew from receive more funding from you, where you have various schools. You start talking about their theories and how they make perfect sense. You use that to push your political objectives and get policies passed. Things get fucked. Those policies fall out of favour, but not before making millions if not billions for certain people who pushed those. Wait a decade, find a new economist, rinse and repeat.
So you decide what is science and what isn't? What is your model of what a science is? As long as you can't answer that, the only thing unscientific is your comment.
> The alternative to economics is politics where political decisions like austerity are not wrapped up in economics and pushed hook line and sinker.
You can use any science to wrap up political decisions. Also, economics is not a normative science like philosophy. Everything economics does is to say: "According to model M, if you do X in situation Y, then Z happens". If politicians turn it into austerity measures or deficit spending, then that' s politics, not economics.
> because leading economist nobel prize winner said so.
Be more specific. Who said what?
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
Please list a set of economic truths. Any set will be good enough as long as it can make reliable predictions that can be tested in the real world.
> You can use any science to wrap up political decisions.
You could, but the point is not to. Or if you want to then make sure that the science is predictive.
> Be more specific. Who said what?
When you are talking about the general facts that economics is often prescriptive but at the same time can be shown to be unpredictive which proves that it is not fit for this task. Yet economists and their political allies continue to argue that it is. Maybe it's better than simply political arguments and maybe the justification for supporting the orthodoxy is in line with that. That you're scared of the political outcome and so economics is a safer option.
Economics is not a mathematical science, it has no underlying axioms like mathematics. Neither does biology, medicine or climate science. Do you think these are not sciences either?
> When you are talking about the general facts that economics is often prescriptive...
That's wrong, economics isn't prescriptive, maybe that's your basic misunderstanding. Economics is a positive science, just like biology or climate science, it doesn't tell you what to do, it just tries to understand 'if this, then that'.
Social science, which is most definitely science, must deal with the additional complexity of dealing with weird, quirky, fickle human beings. In a real sense, you and I are not the same people we were yesterday. Rocks and towers are much less interesting from that perspective.
Some physical or hard sciences, even without people, are lousy at predicting. Meteorology is a science, and there’s a reason for the old saw that the weather man is never right. What meteorology and social sciences have in common is they study complex dynamic systems where knowing the state of the entire system at any given time is difficult or even impossible and seemingly insignificant differences in precision can produce entirely different predictions.
Sometimes it is not the scale of complexity that makes a problem tough to tackle. I believe we agree that mathematics is a science, and I’ll make the modest claim that theoretical computer science is a branch of mathematics. We cannot predict in general whether an arbitrary Turing machine given a certain input will halt or run forever. Nevermind the simple question of whether a computer program will eventually terminate: Rice’s theorem tells us that in general we cannot predict whether an arbitrary program has any interesting property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice%27s_theorem
Science is more than just high school physics problems.
Economics is definitely not a science. It is a social science -- it can use the methodological tools of science to investigate and support theories applied in situations where the whole may behave predictably but individuals typically won't.
We certainly test hypotheses, strategize, and theorize. But, contrary to physics or biology, there probably will never be a set of iron-clad rules and facts that can be derived.
When I went through graduate school, the elephant in the room was "where did preferences come from?" Preferences are used as the basis of analysis in microeconomics, and macroeconomics tries to base itself on top of micro. The answers of the day were unsatisfying -- neuroscience has made great strides, but we still only see the observation without knowing the underlying system itself.
It's OK for scientists to work on engineering problems or on political policies, but we all need to be aware of what domain we are in.
Besides, there are actually a lot of things that economists agree on: https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/news-flash-economist...
Isaac Newton's Principia was first published in English in 1728. Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. That's a 48 year head start out of the nearly 250 years we have had both physics and economics.
This problem cuts across many areas at the moment. Economics isn't the only thing.
Also, it could be argued that the climate change problem is really a socioeconomic one. I wouldn't say this has been neglected, but berating consumers and producers for what is more of a systemic problem isn't the most helpful thing.
But then later the author rails against how economists are too beholden to their own "bias" and "political" beliefs. So which is it? Are we to utilize evidence to help justify our decisions, or should we base our policy decisions off of our gut? It sounds like the author prefers that we defer our social policy decisions to philosophers, a profession even less beholden to hard evidence to back their conclusions. But bias and political beliefs are simply an extension of personal philosophy, so... you would just end up right back where we started trying to reduce personal preference leaking into hard facts and poisoning the problem-solving process.
It's one thing to say that we shouldn't elevate scientific findings and theories (and in turn their founders) to dogmatic levels. Science is a technique to offer answers to problems; nothing more. The technique and its findings can be incorrect or misused or simply misunderstood, but I don't see how the alternatives proposed are any better. Yes, it would be nice if we (and by extension, our elected officials) could have come to the conclusion about the ill effects of the draft based on an argument like "it's bad to force people to go to war for a cause they might not believe in", but that is an open-ended philosophical question and is why we have a democratic process in the first place. We all get a say in what our values are and how our public policy aligns with those values.
I feel like the author does exactly what he argues against: hand-picks a number of data points (very loose ones in this case), packages them up into some kind of position that backs his worldview that things are not going the way he would prefer, and then uses that to argue a deeper philosophical point rather than just get at the concept that scientific findings can often be abused (maybe because that is a much harder problem to solve than just saying economists suck).
Don't even get me started on the fact that the author refers to economists as "privileged" and infers that they are a social class which "came to enter policymaking and insinuate themselves into the governing class". As if people in the field of economics are just born into this powerful bubble in society and should shut their mouths because they simply got lucky in life; not that many of them worked hard to get in to their current profession.
I missed the vizier training classes though. That's unfortunate -- being able to intentionally shape world events would really satisfy the ego. /s
Truth be told, there is a spectrum of political leanings among economists akin to the spectrum of political leanings among developers. We're not a superclass of reptilian ubermensch and uberfrauen able to worm our ways into the minds of the powerful.
Possibly the main missing point is that the book appears to be uninformed that there are many economic scholars researching inequality, race[1], feminism[2], environmentalism[3], and other progressive areas[4].
Really, there is a broad set of things considered "economics" and I encourage folks to check it out[5].
Remember that all models are wrong, but some are useful. The article's mention of Oi's work highlights this, but the book's takeaway is weird. Rather than a justifiable conclusion of "economists are learning the same as the rest of the world how to manage their leaky abstractions" the book instead treats the reader to FUD.
[1] http://www.columbia.edu/~bo2/bookflyer2015.pdf
[2] http://www.feministeconomics.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics
I'm TOTALLY FINE with lobbying, patronage, sponsorship, and bias. More than fine. If its declared.
But even "serious economists" like you have to admit there's personalities claiming expertise you know they lack. The whole Gell-Mann Amnesia thing. Those times someone on TV spews some nonsense that makes you want to kick a puppy in outrage.
I can't count the number of times I've heard that trotted out as a tired defense of bad modelling. All models are wrong: some are useful, some are dangerous. Are you sure you can distinguish between those categories?
> Possibly the main missing point is that the book appears to be uninformed that there are many economic scholars researching inequality, race[1], feminism[2], environmentalism[3], and other progressive areas[4].
I don't think either the reviewer or the book itself are claiming that there are no economists that study those causes. It sounds like the book claims that postwar economists have enjoyed unaccountable policy influence, and their methodology has blinded them to certain consequences of their advice.
Typically yes, through appropriate risk assessment. Cue "Antifragile" here.
If you're building an economic model and they economy enters a regime that you haven't seen before in your data, your model calibration is going to crumble. So maybe good models can be distinguished from bad when predicated on the assumption that the near future looks like the past. But when that changes (i.e. when you need your models most) is when your models become least reliable.
Suppose we get rid of economists and their models; then what do we use in their place to guide policy? Our intuition? No thanks. If someone has a superior theory of the economy, they must show it with logic and empirical observation. Until they do, we are stuck with our more flawed models.
Controlled small-scale experiments? Ethnography? Historical analysis? Debate among stakeholders?
Why do decisions have to be justified using mathematical models? Especially when those models have to be simplified to the point where they're really just "stories" (Paul Krugman's words) about economies? Why not just tell the stories in English?
In a number of fields where the object of study is particularly complex - biology and medicine being notable examples - mathematical models are ineffective. What makes you think the economy is different?
Before the 70s/80s, everyone was somewhat confused about what they were arguing, particularly in macroeconomics. Now it's much clearer the kinds of claims we are making about the world.
Mathematics might force you to be internally consistent, but it also forces you to make bad assumptions. You can prove anything by reasoning from a faulty premise.
And one important thing we learned from those models (which I agree do not work) is that we don't get business cycles from irrationality or from agent heterogeneity -- we get them from the failure of markets to clear. Economists were confused about this for like a century, and thanks to mathematical modeling it became clear.
That seems like a profoundly narrow viewpoint to me. I mean maybe you're right in the sense that there might be an equation that governs the evolution of the universe, but are you really saying mathematical models are the only way to approach research?
If so I strongly recommend you do some scientific reading outside of economics and physics. I think most interesting phenomena in the world are too complex to capture in mathematics. Physics is a profound outlier in that regard.
> And one important thing we learned from those models (which I agree do not work) is that we don't get business cycles from irrationality or from agent heterogeneity -- we get them from the failure of markets to clear. Economists were confused about this for like a century, and thanks to mathematical modeling it became clear.
I really don't think that's clear at all.
Specifically, the FUD part sort of worked on me a bit in retrospect. The book was likely written this way because it gets listened to and sells copies.
That said just because there is a dash of spin doesn't mean it is any less true.
Take the Capital Pools & Flows chart and put the corresponding 8 forms of demand (social demand, material demand,...) on the right side. Then ask how to use the 8 forms of capital on the left to satisfy the 8 demands on the right, especially when each form of capital can be used to satisfy multiple forms of demand.
Then expand the list of types of capital into the thousands, expand the types of demands into the thousands, and realize we're living in a society with hundreds of millions of people. How do you use the many forms of capital, which each have finite supply alternative uses, to satisfy the many forms of demand?
That's a big problem to solve and it's exactly the problem that the field of economics studies.
Economists get listened to when their ideas are convenient for people with political power, and otherwise they get ignored.
It's much the same, but more obviously ridiculous if you rephrase it with a physical scientist: Chemist estimates some pesticide is lingering in unsafe levels on one particular kind of fruit in certain limited circumstances, then politicians use the finding to enact a sweeping farming regulation, then the chemist gets shit on for not considering the effect on the price of food.
As a data scientist, I find this happening to me sometimes. I tell a PM that we can say X causes Y, but can't really say what the relationship between X and Z is, and people get really frustrated by that. Then they really want an estimate. If you tell them, "fine it's 3 +/- 15" all they hear is "3" and now it's your fault if they make decisions as if we knew for a fact that 3 is the answer. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'm sorry that the scientific method isn't an oracle, but that's life. We still have to make decisions.
Tetraethyl is an easy case, because it was car companies who realized its use in fuel in the first place, so we don't even need to figure out who to blame, unless you want to blame its original inventor who did it almost a century earlier, before the gas engine was even invented.
And they did.
When you can give government a cudgel to use on the people they will.
In that vein, Economics has been a cudgel. It has absolutely fuck all nothing to do with physics and is often ex post facto. “This is how it was so it’s how it must be.”
What a shock, since that’s essentially traditional values level emotional thinking and oh right a lot of our economic policy has been formed by limbic systems captures by childhoods of having “believe in bullshit forever” jammed down their throats.
Neuroscience has revealed too much about the functional loops in our brain for me to buy anything else. This was emotionally fueled justification to stick to a social meme. Not useful science or social philosophy. More of the same “justify in math, a language the masses cannot reason around well, the structure of our inequality.”
Economists are yesterdays wise men and today more like the those who insisted we’d be driving nuclear powered rocket cars: crackpots
What I need, personally and emotionally, are new ideas, solutions, some notion of a path forward.
When I rant (in public), I try to also propose an alternative, to somehow make it constructive.
So please stay angry. Moral outrage is a potent tool.
But also please help me (us) by converting your outrage into action.
Economists will always be the people policy-makers turn to, because they are the only people who actually try to understand the economy. Economists sometimes try to advance an agenda (and the actual economist varies by person), but the alternative is to turn to someone who only has an agenda.