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Comment by ralph84 | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting that The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is not an actual Nobel Prize. It was established by a central bank so they could award people who justify the existence of central banks.

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Do you have any evidence that this was the reason why the prize was established?

I think the only ”evidence” there is, is that it was initiated about the same time the US got off the gold standard.

No, not really worth noting.

Well, it's also manipulative. It wasn't created by Alfred Nobel but the Nobel Foundation does refer to it as a Nobel prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/

Economics already existed when Nobel died. It's not an oversight that there is no Nobel prize in economics, he didn't consider it a science worth a Nobel prize. That's why his family still tries to get his name off the Riksbank prize.

Do they?

From what I can tell in admittedly fairly brief reading, a single member of the family is trying to remove the name, while the rest of the family simply want it distinguished from the other prizes while not objecting to the use of the name per se.

This statement from Peter Nobel[0], the man actively trying to remove the name, presumably sums up the best arguments he had available against using the name, and makes no mention of other family members trying to deny usage.

[0] https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-disso...

I know you are just responding to the argument made by the comment you are responding to. But I would argue that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how the Nobel family feels about the Prize. The Ecenomics Prize is sham regardless, and if the Nobel family participate in that sham, it doesn't make it less so.

Sham? Really? What makes it a sham? They hand out counterfeit money as the prize? Some dudes on a bar stool in Liverpool decide who wins? It's a prize that is awarded by the Nobel committee, that has Nobel's name in the title, that for the sake of shortness we call the Nobel Prize in Economics, even though the full name is something longer. What about that is a sham?

>that for the sake of shortness

This is the part that makes it a sham. You call it that to give it a legitimacy it doesn't have. The entire thing is a project in giving economics as a field a legitimacy it doesn't have.

The Nobel Prize are prizes donated by Alfred Nobel. The Riksbank prize wasn't so it's not a Nobel and calling it so is a lie.

Yes, it is technically separate from the other Nobel prizes, but no one treats it any differently than the rest of them.

I mean quite a few people treat it differently, you just have to look as far as some of Nobels decedents. Wyattpeak linked the article a bit below.

>It is a deceptive utilisation of the institution of the Nobel Prize and what it represents.

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-disso...

Not to mention one of its awardees, Hayek.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay...

> but no one treats it any differently than the rest of them

Which is precisely the problem, and the intended effect. It's a propaganda effort.

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