January 28, 2019

There is NO such thing as “smart, honest, honorable economists”

Comment on Brad DeLong on ‘Yes, There Are Individual Economists Worth Paying Respect to. But Is Economics Worth Paying Respect to?’

Blog-Reference

“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)

To this day, economists do NOT have the true theory. To recall, scientific truth is well-defined: “Research is, in fact, a continuous discussion of the consistency of theories: formal consistency insofar as the discussion relates to the logical cohesion of what is asserted in joint theories; material consistency insofar as the agreement of observations with theories is concerned.” (Klant)

The fact of the matter is that the major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong.

For 200+ years now, economists do not know what profit is.#1 Because of this foundational blunder, economics is scientifically worthless. And because of this, economic policy guidance NEVER had sound scientific foundations. And because of this, economists are the major cause of economic crises. By default, every economic mess is econogenic unless proven otherwise.#2

Economics is for 200+ years at the proto-scientific level. What is long overdue is a Paradigm Shift. This cannot happen with the given personage. Economists’ modus operandi is to simply ignore scientific standards and to imperturbably recycle falsified theories: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern)

Krugman, for example, who is on the list of “smart, honest, honorable economists” has not realized to this day that Keynes’ I=S is false for 80+ years and still recommends IS-LM as a useful model.#3

Economists are not smart, the proof being that they have not figured out to this day what profit is and how the monetary economy works. They are neither honest nor honorable because what they are doing for 200+ years now is NOT science but political agenda-pushing. Economists are NOT scientists but agenda pushers / useful idiots / clowns in the political Circus Maximus.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 For details of the big picture see cross-references Profit
#2 Econogenics in action
#3 Mr. Keynes, Prof. Krugman, IS-LM, and the End of Economics as We Know It

Related 'Economists: “a bevy of camp-following whores”' and 'Your economics is refuted on all counts: here is the real thing'.

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