Cannot be?johncwrightOctober 14 2008, 02:10:06 UTC
"economics is not and cannot be a science"
If so then every opinion anyone has about economic phenomenon -- including yours -- is merely an unscientific speculation at best, or "an excuse to indulge personal inclinations and desires." -- including the opinions given in your article here.
If we take you at your literal word, you impeach your own testimony.
Economics can be a science if and only if that are invariants in human behavior, categories of action that do not change with time and place, or which the national psychology of the group involved. In other words, if economics is treated as you treat it here, as an unscientific speculation about the mass psychology of men in the marketplace, it is not economics: it is merely an ad Hominem, an attempt to read unsavory motives into the minds of one's opposition.
No. You start from the mistaken premise that the only kind of knowledge is science. Where would that leave history? Or the criticism of art and literature? The fact that Sir Ernst Gombrich or Eric Auerbach are superior to the average newsaper art or book reviewer is unarguable; yet what they write about is not quantifiable, experimentable and "certain" in any way that may be called scientific. I divide knowledge into three parts: science (the subject reflecting on an object outside itself - including the human body, when treated as different from the human being); human studies, or history (the subject reflecting on itself); and the arts - the subject reacting to, and adding to, reality. Human studies can come to conclusions that are true or false, but these conclusions are reached by a different route than that of science, namely discussion and consensus. In general, the study of history has confidence that truth, or a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable opinions, will emerge from the discussion of experts; and
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Well said. I remember the wave of privatizations of utilities and so on; I was only a teenager, and I was - apart from being rather shocked by the sudden wave of greed - chiefly baffled by the way people were being persuaded that they were getting a good deal in buying shares in what was national property, i.e. they were buying shares in something that belonged to them with their own money. Which is a bit like renting the use of my computer from the bloke who stole it.
Poor Adam Smith; he gets blamed for a lot of things he'd have died rather than acknowledge, including this nonsense about basing an economy on financial trading (really, there are times when I think that the middle ages were right about usury).
Lending money at interest makes sense when it is in effect a contribution to a productive enterprise, that is, when it is given to someone who will use it for a profitable enterprise and pay the interest out of the profits. It is also inevitable in commercial lending, because anyone who provides a service - such as a loan - will inevitably want to be paid for his service, above and beyond the return of his capital. However, that something is inevitable does not make it any less dangerous. I have mentioned Warren Buffett exactly because he has become the world's richest man by wisely investing his and other people's money in long-term, productive businesses; but for every Warren Buffett who looked to the long term and to what business was actually meant to do, there are inevitably hundreds of gamblers who only want to see the colour of more money.
Lending money at interest makes sense when it is in effect a contribution to a productive enterprise, that is, when it is given to someone who will use it for a profitable enterprise and pay the interest out of the profits. It is also inevitable in commercial lending, because anyone who provides a service - such as a loan - will inevitably want to be paid for his service, above and beyond the return of his capital. However, that something is inevitable does not make it any less dangerous
Absolutely - and I don't think the clock could be turned back - it's more an emotional reaction to the late insanity than anything else, I suppose.
Although I think starting at the collapse of Bretton Woods is a little questionable. Fixed currently rates had their own problems, we may not have run into this specific crisis without the collapse of BW, but something similar would almost certainly have taken place.....
I really feel that I started with Margaret Thatcher; but in order to explain her, a few words about the seventies crisis, its causes, and why blaming the unions was in my view wrong, were necessary.
Speaking as someone with no pre-existing opinion one way or another on Margaret Thatcher, I found this a fascinating read.
Did similar things happen in the U.S.? Being a Midwesterner I'm used to seeing abandoned factories, and I've heard it mentioned that the government was involved in shutting down industries. I've never looked into it in detail though.
That is why I only spoke about Britain. It was a reality I felt I could handle with certainty. I do not know nearly as much about contemporary American developments, and while I feel pretty sure that similar attitudes and behaviours were at the heart of a visibly similar development, I do not feel that I can argue such a position well enough to be able to defend it.
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If so then every opinion anyone has about economic phenomenon -- including yours -- is merely an unscientific speculation at best, or "an excuse to indulge personal inclinations and desires." -- including the opinions given in your article here.
If we take you at your literal word, you impeach your own testimony.
Economics can be a science if and only if that are invariants in human behavior, categories of action that do not change with time and place, or which the national psychology of the group involved. In other words, if economics is treated as you treat it here, as an unscientific speculation about the mass psychology of men in the marketplace, it is not economics: it is merely an ad Hominem, an attempt to read unsavory motives into the minds of one's opposition.
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Poor Adam Smith; he gets blamed for a lot of things he'd have died rather than acknowledge, including this nonsense about basing an economy on financial trading (really, there are times when I think that the middle ages were right about usury).
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Lending money at interest makes sense when it is in effect a contribution to a productive enterprise, that is, when it is given to someone who will use it for a profitable enterprise and pay the interest out of the profits. It is also inevitable in commercial lending, because anyone who provides a service - such as a loan - will inevitably want to be paid for his service, above and beyond the return of his capital. However, that something is inevitable does not make it any less dangerous. I have mentioned Warren Buffett exactly because he has become the world's richest man by wisely investing his and other people's money in long-term, productive businesses; but for every Warren Buffett who looked to the long term and to what business was actually meant to do, there are inevitably hundreds of gamblers who only want to see the colour of more money.
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Absolutely - and I don't think the clock could be turned back - it's more an emotional reaction to the late insanity than anything else, I suppose.
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Although I think starting at the collapse of Bretton Woods is a little questionable. Fixed currently rates had their own problems, we may not have run into this specific crisis without the collapse of BW, but something similar would almost certainly have taken place.....
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Did similar things happen in the U.S.? Being a Midwesterner I'm used to seeing abandoned factories, and I've heard it mentioned that the government was involved in shutting down industries. I've never looked into it in detail though.
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