AXEC: New Foundations of Economics: Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?

January 24, 2017

Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?

Comment on Michael Norman on ‘Stephanie Kelton BLOCKED ME on Twitter. Wow.’

Blog-Reference

This is the normal reaction of a scientifically trained non-economists when he is for the first time confronted with standard economics: “What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse.” (McCauley, 2006)

Economists, though, are a different species.

(i) The representative economist who takes his academic degree and is convinced that supply-demand-equilibrium provides an acceptable theory of how the economic system works and accepts standard economics (with the usual reservations/disclaimers/excuses#1) is scientifically incompetent.

(ii) The representative economist who communicates/defends standard economics on his own blog or on the numerous economics blogs propagates a provably false theory. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong.

(iii) The representative economist who is given proof in the course of a discussion that standard economics is false and does not understand the argument is not only scientifically incompetent but stupid.

(iv) The economist who understands the proof and deletes it from his blog or automatically filters all serious counter-arguments out violates scientific standards and undermines the claim that economics is a science as expressed in the title: “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.

The current state of economics is that of a failed science. The propagation of the four main approaches, therefore, amounts to unintentional disinformation or intentional misinformation.

Which blogs promote serious research/discussion and which are corrupted can only be found out by testing, that is, by submitting well-argued posts. From concrete experience follows this random selection of blogs that block/delete occasionally/permanently challenging contributions (last updated Sep 20, 2019):

Note that the blog owner is entitled to reject submissions for whatever reason. There is nothing illegal in selecting the content of one’s own blog. What is at issue is the violation of well-established and well-known SCIENTIFIC standards.

How to double-check the past and actual intensity of scientific corruption in three easy steps:
(1) Go to the AXEC Blog
(2) Click the label zML (ML = missing link). All posts that have been submitted but did not appear or vanished later are selected.
(3) Click Blog-Reference at the post’s header for jumping to the discussion thread and looking for the submitted AXEC post.

If you cannot find it this can mean two things: (i) a technical glitch, (ii) censorship. If this happens more than two times with the same blog it is very probable (ii). What can also happen is that a post reappears after some time. In this case, the ML label is corrected as soon as it is noticed.

This exercise confirms in greater detail what is already known since the founding fathers: economics has been hijacked and corrupted by politics. The representative economist as he presents himself on the economics blogs is a rather stupid flag-waving agenda pusher and NOT acceptable in the scientific community.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses

Related 'Why is economics a total scientific failure?' and 'Did economics fail? No! Yes, and everybody knows it!' and 'Profit: after 200+ years still elusive' and 'Gossip economics' and 'Economics: communication without content' and 'What comes first: eco-self-destruction or oeco-self-destruction?' and 'Oxford economics — still at the proto-scientific level'. For details of the big picture see cross-references Incompetence and cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists and cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption.

***

COMMENT on Dan Lynch on Jan 25

You say: “I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.” This is (i) not very interesting for the rest of the world, (ii) entirely beside the point.

As a matter of principle, everybody has the right to his own opinion no matter how stupid, crazy, wrong, or absurd; the only exception is scientists. The ancient Greeks started science with the distinction between doxa (= opinion) and episteme (= knowledge). Scientific knowledge is well-defined by material and formal consistency. Knowledge is established by proof — belief or opinion counts for NOTHING.

Opinion is the currency in the political sphere, and knowledge is the currency in the scientific sphere. It is extremely important to keep both spheres separate. Since the founding fathers, though, economists have not emancipated themselves from politics. They claim to do science but they have never risen above the level of opinion, belief, wish-wash, storytelling, soapbox propaganda, and sitcom gossip.#1

So, the point with MMT is this:
1. There is a mistake/error/blunder in the formal foundations of MMT. In other words, MMT does not satisfy the scientific criterion of logical consistency.#2
2. The formal proof has been submitted to an MMT blog.#3
3. This proof has NOT been answered but simply deleted.
4. It is against the most elementary scientific rules to suppress refutation. As everybody knows from Popper “... science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”
5. MMT is fake science or what Feynman called cargo cult science. The same holds for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism.

The point is this: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

Economists do NOT have the true theory and because of this, all economic policy proposals are worthless — nothing more than personal opinion and soapbox blather.

Economics in general, and this includes MMT, has to be thrown out of science because of the 200+ years of violation of well-defined and well-known scientific standards.

#1 Gossip economics and Delusions of useful idiots
#2 The final implosion of MMT
#3 Modern Moronomic Theory

***

COMMENT on Dan Lynch, Neil Wilson on Jan 25

Dan Lynch says: “Instead it [economics] should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.”

Now, this is exactly what has happened in the past 200+ years.#1 And this is why economics is a failed science: “... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ ... than we knew in 1790 after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations.” (Clower) In the same time span, physics went from the Law of Gravity to Quantum Mechanics.

Imagine a philosopher and a guru discussing. Says the philosopher, let’s build an aircraft and fly to a South Sea island and have a good life there. Says the guru, better let’s fly to Tibet and search for spiritual enlightenment there. Enters the physicist with the remark: you folks will go nowhere because you have no idea of the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material science, etcetera and because of this you will never get anything off the ground.

The situation in economics is analogous. The discussion about capitalism and communism has always been a pointless distraction because economists do NOT know how the monetary economy works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong. Economists do not even understand the elementary algebra of accounting as the discussion about MMT has shown.#2

The primary question is how to get out of the state of a proto-science, fake science, pseudoscience, cargo cult science, failed science ... Certainly NOT with more philosophy or religion or more sitcom blathering.#3

A side issue is how did we get into this mess? The most obvious hypothesis is that both orthodox and heterodox economists are incompetent, stupid, and corrupt. Your brain-dead posts about capitalism and communism corroborate this hypothesis.

By the way, the economic laws for the monetary economy are the SAME under capitalism and communism just as the laws of aerodynamics are the same whether one flies to the South Sea or to Tibet.#4

#1 Economics: Poor philosophy, poor psychology, poor science
#2 The final implosion of MMT
#3 From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy to Sysdoxy
#4 See the First Economic Law on Wikimedia AXEC06 and the macroeconomic Profit Law on Wikimedia AXEC08.

***

Wikimedia AXEC144b

***

#PointOfProof

#EconBlocker

Knowledge only — no opinion

Science does not explain everything, but non-science explains nothing.

Neither orthodox nor heterodox economics satisfies the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency.

Economists cannot explain how the economy works. The Profit Theory is false since Adam Smith. There is much opinion and little knowledge.

Opinion is the realm of political economics, knowledge is the realm of theoretical economics.

Political economics is scientifically worthless.

Theoretical economics is built upon clearly stated premises, i.e., upon a set of axioms.

Orthodoxy got the axiomatic foundations wrong and Heterodoxy has none at all.

Economics is a failed science. Economists are incompetent scientists.

Profit

Neither Classicals, nor Walrasians, nor Marshallians, nor Marxians, nor Keynesians, nor Institutionialists, nor Monetary Economists, nor MMTers, nor Austrians, nor Sraffaians, nor Evolutionists, nor Game theorists, nor EconoPhysicists, nor RBCers, nor New Keynesians, nor New Classicals ever came to grips with profit. Hence, they all fail to capture the essence of the market economy.

Because of this, economists have nothing to offer in the way of a scientifically founded economic policy guidance.

The hybrid science

As a first approximation, one can agree on the general characteristic that the economy is a complex system.

However, with the term system one usually associates a structure with components that are non-human. In order to stress the obvious fact that humans are an essential component of the economic system the market economy should be characterized more precisely as a complex hybrid human/system entity.

The scientific method is straightforwardly applicable to the sys-component but not to the hum-component. While it is clear that the economy always has to be treated as an indivisible whole, for good methodological reasons the analysis has to start with the objective system-component.

In gestalt-psychological terms the economic system is the foreground, individual behavior the background. Common sense wrongly insists that the hum-component must always be in the foreground. This fallacy compares to geo-centrism. The economic system has its own logic which is different from the behavioral logic of humans. The systemic logic is what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand.

There are systemic laws but no behavioral laws. Systemic laws have the same methodological status as physical laws.

Neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy can tell what the systemic laws of the actual monetary economy are.

Whether the outcome of the human/system-interaction is good or bad is a politcal question that lies outside of theoretical economics. Theoretical economics explains how the actual economy works - no less, no more.

Narrative vs.Theory

Psychological, sociological or behavioral assumptionism cannot yield anything other than a gossip model of the world. Second-guessing the agents is not economic analysis.

Science deals exclusively with propositions that can in principle be decided by objective means. The rest is opinion, faith, phantasy, motive speculation, allegation, hallucination, myth, paranoia, ink-blot association, psychology, philosophy, in one word: storytelling.

Storytelling is the original mode of communication in the social realm — except science.

Political economics is storytelling and, by default, the natural habitat of confused confusers. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are social narratives and not scientifically valid representations of reality.

"The truth is, most persons, not excepting professional economists, are satisfied with very hazy notions." (Fisher)

In marked contrast, theoretical economics lives up to the standards of material and formal consistency. A scientific theory is the best mental representation of reality that is humanly possible.

Theory starts with a set of objective and consistent axioms.

Paradigm Shift

"The problem is not just to say that something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy." (Feynman)

"As will become evident, there is more agreement on the defects of orthodox theory than there is on what theory is to replace it: but all agreed that the point of the criticism is to clear the ground for construction." (Nell)

"The moral of the story is simply this: it takes a new theory, and not just the destructive exposure of assumptions or the collection of new facts, to beat an old theory." (Blaug)

"Is it not a fact, which stares at us from the histories of all sciences, that it is much more difficult for the human mind to forge the most elementary conceptual schemes than it is to elaborate the most complicated superstructure when those elements are well in hand?" (Schumpeter)

"The task of producing knowledge against the grain requires imagination." (Mirowski)

"A new idea is extremely difficult to think of. It takes a fantastic imagination." (Feynman)

"The scientific imagination dreams of explanations and laws." (Peirce)

"It is brilliance of imagination which makes the glory of science." (Evans)

"... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ ... than we knew in 1790, after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations." (Clower)

Selftest and to watch for

You apply one of these items

• supply-demand-equilibrium,

• general equilibrium,

• marginal utility,

• well-behaved production functions,

• total income = value of output,

• total income = wages + profits,

• I=S,

• wage rate down - employment up,

• behavioral axioms?

Then you are out of science because of unnoticed material or formal inconsistency.

Every economist who uses the concept of equilibrium is scientifically incompetent because she/he failed to notice that equilibrium is an economic nonentity.

Practically this means: as soon as the word equilibrium appears in an economic text it can be thrown into the waste basket. The same holds for all other nonentities.

The vast majority of economists deals mainly with nonentities. This is why Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is scientifically worthless.

Since Adam Smith, economic policy guidance has no sound scientific foundations.

To be replaced (1)

The core premises of Orthodoxy are uncertain and false and this fully explains the failure of the research program.

“As with any Lakatosian research program, the neo-Walrasian program is characterized by its hard core, heuristics, and protective belts. Without asserting that the following characterization is definitive, I have argued that the program is organized around the following propositions: HC1 economic agents have preferences over outcomes; HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints; HC3 agent choice is manifest in interrelated markets; HC4 agents have full relevant knowledge; HC5 observable outcomes are coordinated, and must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub)

The inescapable Paradigm Shift consists of the move from this obsolete hard core to the superior set of structural axioms.

To be replaced (2)

The fundamental equations of macroeconomics have been formulated by Keynes in two lines.

"Income = value of output = consumption + investment. Saving = income - consumption. Therefore saving = investment."

This elementary syllogism is demonstrably false. The demonstration consists in the proof that Keynes could not solve the Profit Puzzle. Neither did Post-Neo-New-Keynesians.

In the most general terms, the economics Paradigm Shift consists in switching from the behavior-centric bottom-up approach to the structure-centric top-down approach. This is comparable to the Copernican turn from geo-centrism to helio-centrism.

Consensus

Economics is a science without scientists. Because they are ignorant of the elementary difference between profit and income, the present generation of economists has not made and cannot make a significant contribution to the discussion about how the actual economy works.

Every orthodox or heterodox economist can convince himself/herself that their profit theory is defective.

Every non-economist can — by applying elementary logic — convince himself that conventional profit theories are false. See 'How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down'.

Because the profit theory is false the whole of conventional economic theory has to be rejected.

"What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse." (McCauley)

No scientist will ever accept Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, or Austrianism. These approaches are logically and/or empirically refuted. This is the actual methodological state-of-art. Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, or Austrians are still at the proto-scientific stage. These approaches cannot be improved, only abandoned.

Economists are a public nuisance because they have an opinion on everything but knowledge of nothing.

About me

“Bottom line is that your profit law is just a definition you made up nobody else agrees with, nobody. You are all alone with your precious tautology.” Barkley Rosser

“In any event, your entire theory is based on you doing macro accounting in wacky fashion that nobody agrees with.” Brian Romanchuk

"Your stuff is at least original: it's quite cool after a couple of decades at this to see a fresh Economics. But real promises are not advanced: they were around for millennia until the Greeks obscured them with Metaphysics." Chris Cook

"No mate, they're you-blockers. You have all the personality traits of a crank, and the rest of them have tired of you. You could be 100% right, and you'd still die as your only follower." Steve Keen

"What you are doing fills is all with joy, your constructive critique is most welcome!"

Achim Truger,

German Council of Economic Experts,

in a failed attempt to be ironic

"200+ years of thought and yet you are the only one who gets it—or even understands your argument. Thank god we have you, pseudonymous Twitter user. Otherwise no one would know."

William Luther

Assistant Professor of Economics

in a failed attempt to be funny

"Egmonts profit law is the perfect equation that demonstrates this in action. Put the equation into a spreadsheet and then add government spending and watch how it flows into profits. Enter in some debt (-Sm) and watch too how that flows into profits. It can't go anywhere else."

Dean

About the rest of economics

Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT, Pluralism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/ formally inconsistent. Economics is a failed science.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” Leonardo da Vinci

In economics, the overwhelming majority belongs to Class III. This explains why economics is after 200+ years still at the proto-scientific level.

The obvious task for every economist is to advance from cargo cult science and political agenda-pushing to science. This is absolutely beyond the means of Class III people.

For 200+ years now, economists are not scientists but agenda pushers, useful idiots, clowns in the political Circus Maximus.

Nopopop

This blog does not add to any popular/un- popular opinion.

This blog does not hand out advice about how to avoid taxes, to get rich on the stock market, to be successful in business, to increase the wealth of nations, to run an economy, to maximize welfare, to prevent national/global bankruptcy, to improve the institutional setup of society, to get out of national/global depression, nor about how to save humankind or any subgroup thereof.

This blog is about the true theory of the actual monetary economy.

"In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion." (Stigum)

Focus

Science is of primary interest and importance. Scientists are of secondary interest.

With regard to science, most people lose focus easily because of a natural preference for anecdotes and gossip over facts or subjectivity over objectivity.

Hence, Schumpeter once considered it necessary to remind his habitually disoriented fellow economists: “Remember: occasionally, it may be an interesting question to ask why a man says what he says; but whatever the answer, it does not tell us anything about whether what he says is true or false.”

Science is about true/false and nothing else.

Disclaimer

Missing Blog-Reference links: AXEC does not guarantee that their comments can at any time be recovered from where they have been posted intitially because the availability depends on the publication policy of the blog owner which is implicitly accepted on entering a debate. See also: 'Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?'

Texts: Parts of arbitrary length of any of the author's texts is and will be used again by the author in papers, books, websites, blogs, and other media without explicit reference. The right to make corrections or minor textual improvements on reutilization is reserved. Therefore, it is always a good idea to double-check for the latest version.

Caution: Do not expect a corroboration of your political view. Neither a refutation. Political economics has been scientifically worthless since Adam Smith. Politics has to be separated from economics because it is categorically different from science. The best science can do and has always done is to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you have been objectively wrong or ignorant until now. Science goes beyond the naive common sense of today and becomes the sophisticated common sense of tomorrow.

See also Terms of Use and Legal at www.AXEC.org

Outlook

To recall, while political economics is storytelling, theoretical economics adheres to scientific standards.

The first task of theoretical economics is to get the axiomatic foundations right. This is what J. S. Mill called the opus magnum. Neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy came up with a reasonable solution to this day. This explains the secular stagnation of economics.

There is no serious alternative to structural axiomatic economics. This is not a matter of opinion but of proof. The sole criteria are material and formal consistency.

All of economics has to be reconstructed from the ground up.

Major economic policy implication

The price mechanism does not work as standard economics hypothesizes. The axiom-based Employment Law states that overall employment increases if the average wage rate increases relative to average price and productivity. This gives one the lever to improve the employment situation all over the world and to fend off deflation without rising debt and without artificial capacity growth. To increase the average price relative to the average wage rate and productivity increases unemployment.

Right policy depends on true theory.

“In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

Lacking the true theory, economists promote for more than 200 years opinion instead of knowledge.