Finals Week
While I should be sleeping/grading, I'm instead trying to apply my economic knowledge (since my economics final is due tomorrow, too). Since Facebook comment threads are transient, I wanted to put this minor gem here. Context: a friend of mine received an economics book from a relative and was distraught by the seeming lack of credibility both for the author and for the field of economics as a whole. While I am certainly no economist (and I'm rather skeptical of the practice), here's what I said:
"Most current economics books are bollocks. There are a handful of decent textbooks out there, but they are more oil-prospecting and less science these days. But the reason is relatively simple: for capitalism, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes are no longer accepted as gospel truth; and for socialism, people are still stuck on Karl Marx without having listened to much recent development. All of the world functions on mixed economies now, but we've taken all of the ethics out of economics (thanks in no small part to Randians). Furthermore, all of the assumptions that economists have held for about 200 years are now being challenged in the wake of the global financial crisis (as if they weren't already shaken by John Nash). The rules of the game haven't necessarily changed, but we just got an expansion pack and realized that we only half-read the rules in the first place."
That's all for now. Sleep.
Also, Dead Like Me is my new drug. Like Boston Public and Battlestar Galactica before it. And, you know, the other shows I've practically marathonned the hell out of when I had no time.
"Most current economics books are bollocks. There are a handful of decent textbooks out there, but they are more oil-prospecting and less science these days. But the reason is relatively simple: for capitalism, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes are no longer accepted as gospel truth; and for socialism, people are still stuck on Karl Marx without having listened to much recent development. All of the world functions on mixed economies now, but we've taken all of the ethics out of economics (thanks in no small part to Randians). Furthermore, all of the assumptions that economists have held for about 200 years are now being challenged in the wake of the global financial crisis (as if they weren't already shaken by John Nash). The rules of the game haven't necessarily changed, but we just got an expansion pack and realized that we only half-read the rules in the first place."
That's all for now. Sleep.
Also, Dead Like Me is my new drug. Like Boston Public and Battlestar Galactica before it. And, you know, the other shows I've practically marathonned the hell out of when I had no time.