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Comment by planet-and-halo | Hacker News Reader

I suspect we are all the prisoners of long-dead economists. Their ideas of people as atomic resources were useful abstractions in some ways (I agree with the point below that their work has led to great material prosperity), but they have also influenced entire generations of overly bureaucratic and inhumane policies. People are treated as "things" to be "managed," and as a consequence they develop learned helplessness.

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Economics is the new god, the god of materialism. At some point in the 20th century we decided that material prosperity is really all you need for a happy and healthy society. Doesn’t seem to be working out so well…

By what measure? (Not sure I disagree just curious)

It's a good and fair question, and of course I'm going to dodge it because I wasn't prepared to defend my statement. Probably should have ended with a rhetorical question instead.

If I may attempt to answer it: Because it works for politicians, and the line of people behind the politicians with their left hands offering $X and their right hands demanding special treatment worth 100x$X.

whats the measure here?

I never get what motivates people to blame the system here.

If you have 150k in the bank you could go to a remote place in the US, take a lowkey job where you work 25 hours a week, and live perfectly fine. No one is stopping you.

The only reason you don't do this is because you like nice things, nice food cooked for you, nice immenities, and want your kids to have material prosperity.

I just cut out avocado toast and now I'm well on my way to 150k!

How much is an avocado in the US?

About $0.60 for a small one, up to $1.20 for a large one.

Parent is referencing this joke: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/avocado-toast

You're making some very large assumptions about the reader's circumstances and motivations:

>you have 150k in the bank

>no one is stopping you

>the only reason you don't...

Overall I think your response is not convincing. The problems of materialism are systemic because materialism is baked into the culture and institutions of the US. People are thus motivated to blame the system.

Do you have any idea how few people have $150k in the bank?

Economists just try to explain things. They don't make economics. The nation and enterprises big small in concert make an economic system. But, go back far enough in the past before nations and businesses and economics were still in play.

It's like numbers, it exists even if we are ignorant of it.

Ideally that'd be true, but many economists are prescriptive and help make policy. (I also don't mean to pick on economists especially; many other intellectual enclaves have contributed to current management philosophies and national policies.)

Explain things to what end? So that we can use those explanations to make economic decisions which they can explain again.

Even the least prescriptive economist is going to be a part of this cycle.

Normative[1] economics[2] is[3] definitely[4] a[5] thing[6].

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/normativeeconomics.asp

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_economics

[3] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ec...

[4] https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/normative-...

[5] https://www.soas.ac.uk/cedep-demos/000_P570_IEEP_K3736-Demo/...

[6] https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique-2018-2-pag...

Milton Friedman is a good example of an economist who actively tried to influence economic policy

There are economists who try to explain things, but there are also economists who really want to influence policy/politics. It's hard to separate the two. After all, most economists of renown are advocates for some policy they think is best.

This. It's really easy to view our neoliberal climate as wholly dependent on the individual when you're priveralaged and already, in some way, succeeding. I did, and then I came out as trans, and also as nonbinary. Now, 'the system' is so much more important. Old white men's opinions on my existence could take away my transition (both medical and social) and my life with enough effort, or they could simply deny efforts to improve it (as they so often do). And I can't imagine what it would be like to deal with this and/or be non-white, disabled, or non-rich, for a few examples. In some ways I'm lucky to understand both perspectives, but the perspective of the unprivelaged matters so much more.

This is why I feel that an individual contribution from my life is not enough. No matter how many fires I put out in people's homes, there's still going to be that fucking arsonist.

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