Bourgeois economist basically admits that neo-classical economics is pseudoscience.

[kandrathe]

You wish it was just an opinion

...

Isn't your whole premise anchored on the opinion of one person, Robert Johnson? INET is a George Soros enterprise and it's people propagandize in one direction. An obvious one.

Of all the so called economists in this world, you've happened to find the one that is the truth giver. Hallowed be INET. Blessed be the Soros...

I doubt any reasonable person would argue that economics is as firm a science as physics, or meteorology. Truths in sociology, psychology, and economics are not so easy to form natural equations. And, like many predictive models, once their underlying assumptions erode and become invalid they quickly fall apart.

[Jester]

OK, great, so why is it we still don't include costs of destroying our planet and valuable resources such as biodiversity in the price of things? Is it that economists don't agree on this or do they find other things more important?

This is the question of externalities, one of the oldest questions in economics. It arises when the effects of the actions of agents are not limited to consenting parties. This specific version trades under the name "tragedy of the commons," and has since the days of Adam Smith.

Why do we not include the price of externalities in goods? We try, but it's really hard. Specifically, it's hard in terms of contract specification. How do we come up with these prices? To whom are they paid? Who benefits, but doesn't have to pay (free riders)? Economists have spent an unbelievable amount of time studying these questions.

Everything I do affects everyone around me. If I buy a park and turn it into parking, my decision to pave paradise and put up a parking lot improves some peoples' lives quite a bit (mine, my family, people who want to park in my lot) and harms others by a little (people who liked the trees, people who breathe oxygen) and had an ambiguous effect on others (homeowners and businesses nearby).

So, if I want to do that, whose permission do I need? What title, what license, what agreement must I have? Do I need to mail out cheques for 0.00000000001 cents to each and every person on the planet for destroying 1/1000000000000th of the global biodiversity? Is there some national or international group that regulates this? Who gives them the authority, and how do they exercise it? The problems get very tricky, very fast.

Mostly, we just give up on internalizing externalities, and just regulate things. Thou shalt not. But then you have to coordinate across borders, which we are notoriously bad at.

I mean market economy is only possible when we wouldn't influence the place we live...for continuous growth you need a more or less infinite source of energy and raw materials. Wind and solar energy would fit in this picture, and our economy will be based on that in time.....but why is that process going so slow, I mean if economists tell us we should?

Is there some other economic system that overcomes the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that functions forever and frictionless?

Wind and solar power must be built, installed and maintained. The people who do the manufacturing, installation and maintenance need to eat, live somewhere, and not freeze to death. That means they need houses, which means materials. They need to eat, which means food. They need to be taught how to do these things, which requires schools, which requires buildings and teachers and materials. These things must stand in some priority to one another. Things have prices, if only implicitly, and once you are exchanging things at prices, you have a "market economy" of some kind.

Most economists are not energy economists, and they're certainly not engineers. It is not their job to decide what power plants to use. It's their job to figure out incentives and effects - IF we want more solar, how do we make that happen, and how will that change the rest of the economy?

If you're wondering why the transition to solar is going slowly, you don't need an economist. You need a political scientist. Mark Jacobson at Stanford, probably the biggest booster of a 100% renewables power grid, did some calculations on price. We're talking about roughly $100 trillion dollars installation over the first 10 years, plus maintenance afterwards. That's a completely insane amount of money (10% of total global production!) and I think it's still a serious underestimate. But the reason we don't do it, is because we don't want to pay that price. If you think we should, then take it up with the people who make the decisions about how to tax and spend: Governments, not economists.

-Jester

[eppie]

-Jester

Thanks,

this is why I like the lounge. I learn every day. (well not every but often).
I must admit I have a very negative opinion about economists and that is changing now.

[FireIceTalon]

You wish it was just an opinion

...

Isn't your whole premise anchored on the opinion of one person, Robert Johnson? INET is a George Soros enterprise and it's people propagandize in one direction. An obvious one.

Of all the so called economists in this world, you've happened to find the one that is the truth giver. Hallowed be INET. Blessed be the Soros...

I doubt any reasonable person would argue that economics is as firm a science as physics, or meteorology. Truths in sociology, psychology, and economics are not so easy to form natural equations. And, like many predictive models, once their underlying assumptions erode and become invalid they quickly fall apart.

I doubt Mr. Johnson is even 1/10th as radical as I am, and he sure as hell isn't a Marxist economist.

That being said, what he had to say contained many truthisms - and truth is what I am interested in - I don't really care if they are a Marxist or not. Admittedly I would like see more mainstream economists that use more radical or heterodox analysis instead of the same old shit we see and hear everyday, but that is probably too much to ask and is another topic entirely.

But, I can link you to others that share a similar view if you like.

[Jester]

That being said, what he had to say contained many truthisms - and truth is what I am interested in - I don't really care if they are a Marxist or not.

I appreciate "truthisms". It will join "truthiness" in expanding our horizons of just what truth can be, if we only squint at it just so.

Admittedly I would like see more mainstream economists that use more radical or heterodox analysis instead of the same old shit we see and hear everyday, but that is probably too much to ask and is another topic entirely.

It would be a bit much to ask, given that all of those words are defined relative to each other. If mainstream economists did heterodox economics, then they would either cease to be mainstream, or the economics would cease to be heterodox.

You don't seem interested in the existing variation in methods, beliefs, or ideological leanings among economists. So, what would change if they started using other (non-Marxist) approaches to economics?

-Jester

[kandrathe]

It would be a bit much to ask, given that all of those words are defined relative to each other. If mainstream economists did heterodox economics, then they would either cease to be mainstream, or the economics would cease to be heterodox.

This process does occur across all disciplines, although for many the orthodoxy changes at a glacial pace. Which is in fact one of my beefs with the traditional systems of higher education, in that, the first step, and second steps assess if you are fully inculcated with orthodoxy. If not, you are not readily accepted into the Ph.d. club, and your opinions and/or journal articles, however compelling, are dismissed by the other prelates of the discipline. Which is why a patent clerk luckily ended up as one of the most brilliant minds we've encountered in physics. In 1920, in a letter to Marcel Grossmann, he wrote "Every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political affiliation." These are theories he wrote about and submitted for publication in 1905, that were debated and repeatedly debunked for over a decade

This sounds all too familiar. I guess for me the difference irregardless of knowledge discipline is between the closed minded adherent, and the rational skeptic. For science (irregardless of "hardness") at least, truthiness lies in rational, observable, and repeatable evidence. Which is perhaps difficult for assessing the value of predictive models for both economists, and theoretical mathematicians. I would then repeat your observation that it is frustrating to debate relativity theory with coachman and waiters, and especially when the debate is not specific to any given theory, but seeks to dump out the kit-n-caboodle of known physics because somebody somewhere said something that resonates "politically".

[Archon_Wing]

Maybe you could collaborate with Studio Ghibli someday to make a "Grave of the Invisible Hand" about two orphaned children struggling to survive as their village is destroyed by neoclassical economics. I think neoclassical economics would be depicted as a pokemon sort of creature, maybe a ghost/psychic deceased Meowth. The story would need some delicate writing to ensure that tears will jerk in the right ways when you see the children trying to use scrounged change to buy things in an economic climate of runaway inflation while being unaware of the classism they experience as scavengers with no name, no house, and no honor. ;_;

-Lem

The capitalist borgias elite would never let that happen. And 'collaborating' is a funny way to spell 'single handedly saving anime, animation in general, and humanity from itself'.

In any case Studio Ghibli is a hollow shell of it's former self, now that Mizayaki is retiring, again. I have it on good authority the real cause for the man's retirement was failed economic pseudo science propagated by neo classical economists. It's the absolute truth, though isn't it funny how no one would ever admit this empirical fact. Obviously, capitalism.

No, we must be more clever than the enemy we're fighting. We must redirect, and transform the weapons of the enemy into and unto itself.

I strongly suggest collaborating (and by that I mean blind them with the brilliance and modesty that can only be mustered by the truest of the true Komrade) with Kyoani Studio, instead of Studio Ghibli.

Kyoani is one of the, if not top studio when it comes to producing moe blob shows. Ie: Cute females doing cute stuff. A reboot and re-imagining of the 'magical girl' genre, that is far more deeper than it first seems, with a solid foundation of philosophical underpinning that will embarass, undermine, and defeat the evils of capitalism.

Basically, something like Sailormoon for the new millennium.



That's just phase one, or Operation: Pacific Mango.

Phase two must also be initiated simultaneously or shortly thereafter. An updated old school saturday morning children cartoon staple, redone with the same brilliance and panache as above. Operation: Atlantica Anima.



The neo-classical-cysts capitalists will quake in their child slave labor made boots. Marx my words.

Ah, you can't really rely on Kyoani to create anything meaningful these days or draw acceptable faces; they've already surrendered to their evil overlords and the excesses of otaku based capitalism.

Shaft though I heard is ahead of them though. It's a magical girl series about where the long black haired one has seen her comrades fall repeatedly to vices because they were lured by temptations of modern day society (Drug Abuse, Depression, thievery, and excessive obsesion with augmentation procedures.) but she makes a brillant stand against the man who is exploiting all their labor like typical capitalist overlords and unlike the rest would keep going on in the face of failure instead of killing themselves over something dumb, like their crush not liking them or some shit. :p

Better enjoy it before they start milking the franchise.

[Occhidiangela]

Eppie, look up the term self interest.

[DeeBye]

Eppie, look up the term self interest.

Here I'll help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-interest

[eppie]

Eppie, look up the term self interest.

Finally someone who gets it.


(although I don't know on what post of mine you commented and irony is often difficult to understand if you don't see and hear the person...)

[Hammerskjold]

Ah, you can't really rely on Kyoani to create anything meaningful these days or draw acceptable faces; they've already surrendered to their evil overlords and the excesses of otaku based capitalism.

Otaku based capitalism will be the death of this planet, galaxy, nay, universe. No, seriously guise, I'm super serious sayin' it. It's the -Truth-, and I am not afraid to say it.

Shaft though I heard is ahead of them...

I will ever so humbly admit, that I might not be familiar with their work. I of course have heard of the studio\name, but there is a lot of studio shuffling and offshoots at the moment.

However, I strongly suspect they are also tainted by Otaku-pitalizm as well.


I am keeping an eye out on Studio Trigger at the moment, since I heard they're mostly ex Gainax Studio, and many of their artist previously worked on Gurren Lagann.

A somewhat overly emotional re-constructionist Political and Labor Mechanization Allegory tale, and or a modern retelling of the Matryoshka Doll Social Analogy. With a flawed understanding (of course, due to KKKapitalizm) of a mixed up Power Spiralling Out cautionary tale. But admittedly, it's still enjoyable nonetheless, at least for the proles.

And their latest series managed to snag Hiroyuki Sawano to score their soundtrack.

It's a magical girl series about where the long black haired one has seen her comrades fall repeatedly to vices because they were lured by temptations of modern day society (Drug Abuse, Depression, thievery, and excessive obsesion with augmentation procedures.) but she makes a brillant stand against the man who is exploiting all their labor like typical capitalist overlords and unlike the rest would keep going on in the face of failure instead of killing themselves over something dumb,

Hmmm...I like, I like. I'd like to see someone like Studio Trigger, maybe even Studio Wit do something similar in this genre. But we could use some visuals , even for just place holders. Let's brainstorm and barnstorm the chars here.


Main char girl:



Name: Komi Ni-sama, aka Komi-chan.
Blood type:???
Age: 18
Favourite food: Red Pocky
Power Level:???
Possible Tsundere type.




Antagonist, possible switch to secondary protagonist (maybe even...muv luv interest...?) after the first major story arc:





Name: Ya-gyu Wara Kazutoro aka Senpai McDreamy
Blood type: A-
Age: 26
Favourite food: Salty Otaku-pitalist tears
Power Level: Dependent on the amount of attention he gets.

like their crush not liking them or some shit. :p

I think that's very doable for the first major story arc.
A classic, ' Kyaaa! I hope Senpai notices me today!' storyline for ep1 that introduces the cast, and starts the first story arc to ep 10. After which we can shift gears and turn it into a super angsty edgy poli sci fi drama-commie-dy series.

Better enjoy it before they start milking the franchise.

Damn you Otaku Capitalism! Damn you all to Heinz Katsup!1111