• MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      You’re still not getting it lol. Neoclassical economics is theoretically standing out way over a cliff and simply refusing to look down like Wiley coyote. Your appeal to mathematics is unintentionally hilarious, because it was physics envy and the chasing of mathematical models over real life evidence/coherent theory that led the field astray to begin with lmao. You can come up with all kinds of fancy models and as much mathematics as you like, but none of it matters if you’re basing it on incorrect axioms.

      “Functioning in the real world” - oh yeah for sure. Burning the environment down and cooking the biosphere while forever chemicals and microplastics permanently saturate the ecosystem. Liberal societies are “Functioning” in so far as they’re not actively failed states this very moment, but that is accomplished on the back of neo-imperialism, unequal exchange with the global south, and unresolvable contradictions inherent to neo-liberalism/capitalism. A car driving 80 mph towards a cliff is working, sure, but is that a desirable state of affairs?

      Also take a quick look around my guy. We’re not in a laboratory. I’m calling you an idiot on the internet. Not every conversation is the platonic ideal of scientific pursuit you nerd.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Idk, if it was so plainly “false” and “uneducated” then it seems like it shouldn’t be that hard to provide a refutation of, especially since these are criticisms that even several liberal economists have been making for decades, e.g. “assume a can-opener” discourse.

          And he is talking about axioms, so you don’t even need to worry about correctly notating your fancylad mathematics.

        • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Hear that @[email protected]? I’ve been a bad boy! Come frown at me for hurting the widdle wiberals feelings. He was just using elitism to disparage his interlocutors and maintain a worldview that harms people every day! Why did I have to go and be so uncivil! Whoa is me.

          Classic liberal. When confronted with arguments you don’t understand or have a retort to, you pearl clutch and complain about tone.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Nah, Libs are like this everywhere. The self righteousness, the aggressive ignorance, the near absolutely inability to recognize their own limitations, the incuriousness. I think it’s mostly a consequence of living in a hegemonic cultural and media environment where they never encounter any meaningful challenges to their world view. Liberalism is all they know, and the only thing outside of it that they even casually encounter is fascism through the lens of Lib media venues, so they’re just completely unprepared to critique their own beliefs or situation.

          • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            He’s pretty clearly misunderstood entirely or at least the point of 80% of what I said alone. This man is a weenie and the absolute epitome of someone who took Econ 101 and now thinks they know the secrets of the universe. It’s incredible how much air economics departments blow up their students ass. That just can’t be safe for the human body.

            I STILL WANT MY MAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE CAMBRIDGE CAPITAL DEBATE.

            "It is important, for the record, to recognize that key participants in the debate openly admitted their mistakes. Samuelson’s seventh edition of Economics was purged of errors. Levhari and Samuelson published a paper which began, ‘We wish to make it clear for the record that the nonreswitching theorem associated with us is definitely false. We are grateful to Dr. Pasinetti…’ (Levhari and Samuelson 1966). Leland Yeager and I jointly published a note acknowledging his earlier error and attempting to resolve the conflict between our theoretical perspectives. (Burmeister and Yeager, 1978).

            However, the damage had been done, and Cambridge, UK, ‘declared victory’: Levhari was wrong, Samuelson was wrong, Solow was wrong, MIT was wrong and therefore neoclassical economics was wrong. As a result there are some groups of economists who have abandoned neoclassical economics for their own refinements of classical economics. In the United States, on the other hand, mainstream economics goes on as if the controversy had never occurred. Macroeconomics textbooks discuss ‘capital’ as if it were a well-defined concept — which it is not, except in a very special one-capital-good world (or under other unrealistically restrictive conditions). The problems of heterogeneous capital goods have also been ignored in the ‘rational expectations revolution’ and in virtually all econometric work."

            (Burmeister 2000)

            Awh gee, I wonder where our Poli-sci wonderboy got his degree curious-marx

            • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              For all of their bluster about “starting from a conclusion and working backwards” it’s hilarious watching them start at the beginning with the conclusion that they know better than everyone else (with literally only an undergraduate politics and econ minor as proof) and never deviating or questioning that premise for a single moment throughout this entire thread with zero irony.

              There could not be a flimsier conclusion for someone to work backwards from. They are a happy puppy arrogantly discarding everything they encounter (and I really do mean everything) with complete confidence they are the biggest dog in the yard.

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m a biologist, but my college offered a few humanities courses, so I took an introductory course in economics.

      The maths was fine; it was mostly linear equations and differentiation. But the priors seemed to defy all logic and common sense. It was like a physicist assuming that there was no friction. The impression I got was that economists put too much effort into mathematical rigour and too little into empirical verification.

      Now there are biologists who study animal societies and their ‘economic systems’. But they care more for experiments than for theory, and this seems to me to be the more reasonable approach.