Do you personally agree with the overall tenor of the thinking that is coming from public forums like the wef?
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No! I just noticed that the more I discover the true complexity of a subject, the less opinionated I become (until I master that complexity). Our certainty is inverse to our awareness of unresolved complexity.
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There can be a very stupid game couched in the jargon of complexity. Complexity is no proof that there is something intelligent underneath it. I have a dismal opinion of the way we do economics. It is similar to large legacy software projects. So much of creep it becomes crap.
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I think that the incentives in academia are not well aligned for doing economics right. But it does not follow that a person that does not have any deep expertise in economics has better models than economists.
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It might be similar to philosophy: most philosophy done today is not very good, but philosphers tend to know much more about philosophy than non philosophers.
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Yes, yes, I will complain about the sloppiness of philosophers too when they start getting as much money as economists. :) Also when they start bankrupting countries, trashing the planet, and generally accelerating the extinction of all life on earth.
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nicely said & agree. Wish you both a wonderful day, free of oligarchy-related troubles ;)
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The uncomfortable truth is that democracy IS the rule of oligarchs (but administered by politicians and institutions). When this broke down in Germany, bad things happened, but it was reinstated. This is what "it's the worst form of government, except for all other" refers to...
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At the moment, if you want to change the world, you either have to convince a critical subset of the oligarchs, or become one yourself. Perhaps not a bad entrance exam for someone is you hope to understand economy and social order so deeply that you can dramatically improve it?
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Or you have to initiate one of these revolutions. That’s hard work too.
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Yes, and it often had mixed results! Cuba was arguably one of the most successful ones, and while they are slightly better off than the Dominican Republic, they are arguably quite a bit worse off than Puerto Rico.
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More along your original argument, it would be interesting to try & do a causal analysis about whether the oligarch or the commander in chief is more able to control the direction of development. But then again, none of us has the data.
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I think that even the most powerful oligarchs and commanders have very limited options. Social system design is incentive architecture. Our civilization looks messy, but it is complex clockwork that was hard to build, is difficult to fix and improve, and may be easy to break.
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