June 26, 2017

A note on Marshall's Magic Wand

Comment on Sandwichman on ‘Marshall's Magic Confidence-Wand’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Marshall explains commercial depression: “The chief cause of the evil is a want of confidence.” and “In short there is but little occupation in any of the trades which make Fixed capital.”

No taxi driver could explain it better. This kind of “explanation” is paradigmatic for the level of economic science and for these brain-dead trivialities Marshall is still acknowledged as a great economist. One trembles to contemplate what the economics of his peers had looked like.

Update for students: Marshall’s economics has already been dead in the cradle in 1890. That he and his Principles are not buried and forgotten is a sure indication of the utter scientific incompetence of later generations of scholars. Marshall’s supply-demand-equilibrium is one of the most ridiculous constructs in the history of the sciences but still the centerpiece of every economics textbook.

For details see:
► Marshall: a monument of scientific incompetence
► Marshall and the Cambridge school of plain economic gibberish
► Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: The Market

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke