Elitist view or rational thing?

[tedteague]

Sorry for the delay in my response . . .
First off, while economics is not a precise science, there is reason to it. To use the religion example. You can have a catholic and protestant debate theology all day long, but if neither one understands transubstantions vs consubstantiation or apistolic succession, you're not getting anywhere.
My real problem with the increasingly mainstream economics being tossed around is the gross oversimplification of it. You can have people fire off talking points like "lowering business taxes will let them hire more people" or even the infamous "high unemployment means there wont be much inflation" and then you have people choosing politicians around here half truths.
Granted, economists may not always agree on the best course of action, but they all still understand the relationships between cause and effects within the economy that leads to the rational decision.
For the sake of example, the above used example of business and taxes
Someone may say lowering business taxes gives them more revenue which leads to more hireing. When you lower taxes on business, a number of things can happen. Sure, they might hire more people . . . or maybe they'll invest into more capitol (which very well may lead to layoffs as machines replace people) . . . or they can pocket the revenue as profit and give CEO bonuses . . . or maybe they'll use it to buy another company (which may also lead to more layoffs).
The point is, politicians and people oversimplify things into talking points. Even if it is more of a religion and nobody within the field agrees, nobody I know would agree with such talking points as universal truth. Instead, those within the field disagree based on big, complex models and years of research.
Whenever someone says "let the economy self correct" and you ask them how it would do that (its possible, dont get me wrong) they just go "well . . it does . . . because . . . it does"

[Thorne]

economics is not a precise science ... Even if it is more of a religion...

So let me get this straight. You're saying that economics, like religion, is all smoke and mirrors? Fantasy and fairy tales? Myth and make-believe?

That explains a lot!

[tedteague]

So let me get this straight. You're saying that economics, like religion, is all smoke and mirrors? Fantasy and fairy tales? Myth and make-believe?

That explains a lot!

hmm . . . not trying to be attacking here, but either you completely misunderstood what I said or I didn't say it very well. you missed the forest for trees.
Economics is a science. It is rather unique, however, because you can't have a real control variable. No two countries have identical economies, so what works in one may be disastrous in another. Its not like one can observe two independent timelines, one with a bailout and one without.
It's still using past behavior to attempt to predict future behavior

[Thorne]

hmm . . . not trying to be attacking here, but either you completely misunderstood what I said or I didn't say it very well. you missed the forest for trees.

Wouldn't be the first time I've done that! But you did compare economics to religion, after all. And at least twice you used a religious analogy to illustrate something.

Economics is a science. It is rather unique, however, because you can't have a real control variable. No two countries have identical economies, so what works in one may be disastrous in another. Its not like one can observe two independent timelines, one with a bailout and one without.

I don't know if you can call it a science, then. If you can't have controls, and you can't duplicate experiments, then there's little that is scientific. From where I sit it sounds more like Astrology than Astronomy. You use scientific sounding terms, but in the end it's all guesswork. When you can say, "Given these conditions, you will get this result; changing that condition will change the result in this manner", then you are working scientifically.

It's still using past behavior to attempt to predict future behavior

Lot's of processes do that, including religion. That doesn't make it science.

[tedteague]

well, 1. i dont know how religion tries to predict anything, unless you want to include those guys who calculate when the world will end by dividing the number of vowels by the amount of times the name of the book is mentioned.
To call i astrology is saying theres a room of people who just randomly assign meaning to certain things
Liken it more to physics. We have general ideas where the electron will be at given moment, but we can't know for sure. And we're still trying to figure out quarks.
Psychology has the same difficulty in controlling variables as everyones mind is different. However, there are many things you can still prove as more or less true, like getting shot in one lobe may impair vision or cause a personality change. The same general rules can be applied to economics like price ceilings will lead to shortages. You then use these relationships and trends to determine the effect any action will have on an economy

[DuncanONeil]

So let me get this straight. You're saying that economics, like religion, is all smoke and mirrors? Fantasy and fairy tales? Myth and make-believe?

That explains a lot!

Pretty good!
And it fits right in to the Thorne ethos.

[Thorne]

Pretty good!
And it fits right in to the Thorne ethos.

Hey! Look, everybody! I got my own ETHOS!

WTF is an ethos, anyway?

[DuncanONeil]

Hey! Look, everybody! I got my own ETHOS!

WTF is an ethos, anyway?

I'd like to go a little further than Tantric;


e·thos
    Show Spelled[ee-thos, ee-thohs, eth-os, -ohs] Show IPA
–noun
1.Sociology. the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period: In the Greek ethos the individual was highly valued.
2.the character or disposition of a community, group, person, etc.
3.the moral element in dramatic literature that determines a character's action rather than his or her thought or emotion.