That's economics' second-biggest flaw. Its biggest flaw is its habit of assuming away coercion (in politics, foreign affairs and trade, immigration, law, crime, etc.) and security and yet pretending that its results are universal or readily applicable in coercive situations.https://twitter.com/EconTalker/status/1098641809608269824 …
-
Explain, please. Example?
Most political issues provide examples but here is one where everybody thinks economics should dominate thinking: foreign trade. Economists count the foreign revenues as benefit, even when those revenues are being used to build nuclear missiles aimed at the trading partner.
-
-
If you think an economic model is failing to explain reality, it can be improved. That's part of economics too. And btw economics deals (or can deal) with what you are talking about - e.g.: externalities.
-
But economists very seldo improve their models in these very obvious ways. They have, generally speaking, simply removed the massive amounts of coercion and security that exist in the real world outside of their purview of thinking.
-
The failure of economics to handle coercion perhaps reaches its epitomy and nadir in the Coase Theorem, which I critique in this two-part analysis: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/05/coase-theorem-is-false-contracts-depend.html … https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2009/09/coase-theorem-in-action.html …
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Sorry, Nick, but good economists think exports are the price you pay for imports just as your labour is the price you pay for groceries. A surplus -not invested in productive capital- is just like a bar-keeper letting the drunks run a tab. Not entirely a plus.
-
Yes, economists fill libraries full of books with this narrow kind or reasoning, using vast amounts of mathematics, Greek, and Latin, without ever mentioning what weapons, including nuclear weapons pointed at our families, those foreign purchases are going to fund.
-
How ‘fund’? If they give you goods & you give them $$$, how does that constitute a missile aimed at you? Who do they give the $$$ to, to get them? PS: If they spend too many resources building their own, they will have fewer tradable goods to sell & so earn fewer USD.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Everything you do can have unintended negative consequences. We provide an idea to increase the availability of goods. Its up to others to say whether is justified or not to make everyone poorer so as to minimize the revenues of other governments.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
No need to bring up nuclear weapons. When you meet somebody in the desert who is dying of dehydration, they'll give you anything for a glass of water. If you take full advantge of the situation, that too is coercion. And that kind of coercion happens on the job market every day.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.