April 15, 2018

Economists ― standing on the shoulders of dwarfs

Comment on Roger Farmer on ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Apr 17

Roger Farmer maintains: “There is much that is wrong with existing economics. But to contribute to our subject, you must first understand how we got here. Neoclassical Economics was constructed by young, idealistic, smart, dedicated people, just like you, who built on the ideas of those who came before. Take a page from the book of those who preceded you. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.”

This passage is sufficient proof of Roger Farmer’s utter confusion.#1, #2 Fact is that economics is one of the worst failures in the history of modern science. This is the actual state of economics: provably false
• profit theory, for 200+ years,
• Walrasian microfoundations (in particular equilibrium), for 150+ years,
• Keynesian macrofoundations (in particular I=S/IS-LM), for 80+ years.

The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got profit wrong. With the pluralism of provably false theories economics sits squarely at the proto-scientific level.

Economics is a science without scientists.#3 Feynman called this phenomenon cargo cult science: “They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. ... But it doesn’t work. ... So I call these things cargo cult science because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential.”

What is missing among economists is an understanding of what science is all about. Roger Farmer is no exception. What he has not understood is that economics is NOT a so-called social science but a systems science.

To recommend neoclassical economics as a worthwhile study for the aspiring economist is much like a deranged physicist recommending some pre-Copernican Flat-Earther.#4, #5

There were never “young, idealistic, smart, dedicated people” in economics, only useful political idiots. Economics started 200+ years ago with the agenda pushers, fake scientists, and intellectual dwarfs of Political Economy and has never produced more than proto-scientific garbage.

Roger Farmer’s attempt to somehow associate the dwarfs of economics with the giants of science is not merely a bad joke but a deception of the general public.#6

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Economics: When the scientifically unfit blather about science
#2 When substandard thinkers dabble in science it is called economics
#3 Economics: communication without content
#4 Futile beatification and canonization of an economics Flat-Earther
#5 Economics: 200+ years of scientific incompetence and fraud
#6 The real problem with the economics Nobel

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