I am not going to say that this is wrong, because I haven't read the study. But it was produced by the Berkeley economics department, which could well be the most left-leaning in the country. Significant parts of it are outright Marxist. Which is fine. Diversity of viewpoints and all that. But when a bunch of leftist economists tell you they've proven something that leftists in general wish desperately were true, you should be skeptical.
At least wait for some corroborating evidence to come in before you start writing policy, because you'll hurt people if you get it wrong.
Ask an economist about WHY economy exists in the first place and you can put a bet on the fact that many of them get it wrong. How can anything building on that be right then? Exactly.
This talk is utterly ridiculous. This guy clearly hasn't actually studied the intellectual history of economics. He gets very basic things wrong as soon as he starts. Economics was called the 'dismal science' because it disagree with slave holding elites that slave holding was good for the economy. The phrase 'dismal science' is well attest to a quote of a slave holder angry at economists, calling it 'dismal' because it can't defend slavery. This is well attest and not controversial.
And then he goes on to totally mischaracterize the field, he also doesn't seem to actually know what 'neoclassical' actual means in the history of economics thought.
This actually hurts to watch. Specially when he starts making a bunch of arguments that have been debated within 'neoclassical economics' for a long time. So instead of asking for a 'new economic field' he maybe should have actually read beyond Econ101.
I'm not saying any of his actual recommendation are right or wrong, but his engagement with the field of economics is embarrassing and seems to mostly serve as a crowed pleaser. The old tactic of uniting to fight a common enemy, the evil 'neoclassical' economists.
So, in other words they are less extremely right wing than other economics departments?
To be frank, in most of the sciences, left wing views are overwhelmingly dominant because they are objectively correct (global warming is real, the earth is not 6000 years old, evolution is real, etc). Economics is an outlier, and that is mostly because of its usefulness as a political tool of the powerful. To the extent that it’s right wing, its conclusions are extremely suspect.
For anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating- I grew up Baptist, and I can tell you that what they believe is that God created the earth and all the animals on it recently, that there is no such thing as continental drift or evolution, that Jesus is going to return soon to bring forth the end days, and that Noah really did fit every kind of animal on the ark.
More than that, they believe in maintaining the social order. That’s what they value. The reason they are so upset about trans people, for instance, is that they threaten the male/female gender based social order. They believe in a universe built on simple rules that apply all the time. Don’t kid yourselves, that’s exactly how they think.
And, they believe that having power is its own evidence that you deserve that power, because otherwise why did God give it to you? Therefore powerful people are virtuous and obedience makes you also a good person. And in a certain sense violence is virtue since it cleanses the earth of wickedness.
Again, I grew up among these people and this is absolutely what they believe.
And as a corollary, scientists or activists (largely the same, in their view) are by definition evil because they are in opposition to the social order, or in the case of science they are agnostic to the social order, which is even worse because science treats the social order as irrelevant.
> left wing views are overwhelmingly dominant because they are objectively correct (global warming is real, the earth is not 6000 years old, evolution is real, etc).
Maybe it’s only in your country where these are “left-leaning” views…and I even doubt that.
Example; I agree with these statements but I’m not “left leaning” by any shot.
Like many American commenters (I'm guilty of this as well), we assume a US-centric viewpoint a lot online.
You're right that these positions are not left leaning worldwide. Unfortunately, they are very much left-leaning viewpoints in the US. There are still more than enough voters on the right who genuinely believe the converse that they need to be catered to by right wing politics. And, on the other hand, left wing politics needs to put significant effort into fighting and refuting objections. Arguably, this puts more strain on the left, which might be another factor perpetuating all this.
Mathematical models aren't real in the same way as human social life is. Just like social structures, they are accorded certain laws, which determine their order; but human social structures have real effects, whereas one can modify axioms in a mathematical model and nothing changes until you apply that model to social life. By all means, math can model certain things from basic, accepted axioms that even we aren't aware of and give us conclusions we could've never predicted; but to pretend that this somehow implies that our axioms, which we constructed, are somehow "right" or "wrong" in and of themselves, and not in their relation to how we use such math to organize society--I believe that logic is extremely flawed.
Political ideology is always in the service of constructing a logic to sustain itself, consciously or not, someone constructing a set of axioms that just so happen to lead to the political conclusion they find most favorable, and then they call those axioms true. Whatever truth value someone ascribes to mathematical axioms, whether they be "right" or "wrong," is far less important than for what purpose they are employed.
Weather reports have a lot of math behind them, yet they're regularly wrong. I wonder what's the underlying reason for that? I also wonder whether that reason could also affect economics?
Wonderful comment. We'd require a whole lot more information and processing power in order to be able to accurately predict the weather, and if we had that, we would be able to accurately model and predict a whole host of things.
Like with anything, there is the objective reality that none of us can see, and then there is the constructed reality placed on top of it.
Economics used to be called political economy and split into economics and political science. Economists are well aware that things like 'property' and 'markets' are not some universal absolutes, but engaged in a larger social context. There are whole sub-fields of economics studying all these things.
Sure some macro economics that try to abstract over a huge amount of things, by necessary (its literally called 'macro') but even then they are aware that high level decisions have political implications.
These anti economics hate mostly generated by people who don't actually follow the discussion within the economic field rather believe in some leftist fantasy buggy man version of the economic field.
Joan Robinson: The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
At least wait for some corroborating evidence to come in before you start writing policy, because you'll hurt people if you get it wrong.