Blog-Reference
Economists are NOT scientists but clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus. The EconNobel is a fraud. For details see here.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
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Comment on Peter Dorman on ‘A Nobel for the Randomistas’
Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference
Peter Dorman comments: “I don’t think anyone was surprised by this year’s ‘Nobel’ prize in economics, which went to three American-based specialists in the design of on-the-ground experiments in low income countries, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.”
Indeed, the EconNobel has been criticized on various grounds: (i) male predominance, (ii) theory-predominance, (iii) rich-western-capitalism-focused, (iv) geriatric-predominance, (v) white-predominance, (vi) University of Chicago bias. All these biases have been addressed and solved to everybody’s satisfaction with the team of young/bi-gender/ poverty-concerned/empirical/multicultural Cambridge-MA prize winners.
One problem, though, has been carefully avoided, i.e. that economics is NOT a science to this day. The major approaches — Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT — are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational economic concept of profit wrong. Economics is a failed science.
Economics has NEVER been a science but a smokescreen for political agenda-pushing. Both orthodox and heterodox economists are NOT scientists but clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus. The “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences” is a fraud for 50 years.#1
Peter Dorman wonders “Carefully controlled social experiments can be very expensive! When I read the work of the prize-winners and their coauthors, I often find myself wondering how much did it cost to do this research, and who paid for it? This is a form of Big Science, and it requires big support.”
This is an easy question. Economics departments, chairs, institutions, and pre-selected individuals are traditionally funded by the Oligarchy. Rockefeller called the university ‘the best investment’ he ever made. In our days, though, the quality of sponsors/funders/ agenda-pushers has considerably deteriorated. The active players are not at all secret, the New York Times shows a meeting photo of well-known billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and well-known Harvard economist and political busybody Larry Summers.#2
From all this, one can conclude with a high degree of probability that the EconNobel is a well-calculated, Oligarchy-sponsored, aristocracy-decorated PR stunt that has much to do with the deception of the general public and NOTHING at all with science.
#1 For details see Links on the Economics Nobel
#2 New York Times
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REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Oct 17You say: “To a large degree the Nobel for Chinese growth was given a long time ago to Robert Solow. A nation that invests more grows more. That is pretty much it, …” and “Look, Nobel prizes, including even the ‘fake’ economics one given out by the Sveriges Riksbank for the last half century, focus on people who generate new ideas, not policymakers who may have achieved successful outcomes. You suggest that ‘a poverty-oriented Chinese economist’ deserves the prize, but somehow you do not provide a name. And I would suggest you will not be able to because no Chinese economist has generated any important new ideas on this.”
Solow criticized the DSGE-Orthodoxy: “Since I find that fundamental framework ludicrous, I respond by treating it as ludicrous ― that is, by laughing at it ― so as not to fall into the trap of taking it seriously and passing on to matters of technique.”#1
The same holds, though, for Solow’s own growth model.#2
Nevertheless, the EconNobel “was given a long time ago to Robert Solow”.
It is obvious why the EconNobel will not be given to a Chinese economist. The EconNobel is a Hollywood production for the Western audience initiated and sponsored by the US Oligarchy to reward US economists for their propaganda services to “scientifically” prove the superiority of the US version of self-optimizing supply-demand-equilibrium.
The EconNobel had NO scientific significance 50 years ago and has none this year. And this is NOT because “no Chinese economist has generated any important new ideas” but because no US economist has generated any important new ideas. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and MMT are ludicrous proto-scientific garbage to this day.
#1 Solow and the ludicrousness of economics
#2 Sending Solow’s growth model to the dump of proto-scientific history
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REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Oct 18 and Blog-ReferenceYou say: “Look, Nobel prizes, including even the ‘fake’ economics one given out by the Sveriges Riksbank for the last half century, focus on people who generate new ideas, not policymakers who may have achieved successful outcomes.”
This, of course, is absolutely correct. But then, is your discussion about whether China or the Massachusetts team has been more successful in alleviating poverty not a bit beside the point?
What you are constantly doing is confounding science and politics. This is a hereditary mental and moral disease among economists since Adam Smith. However, the founding fathers were at least honest people and called themselves Political Economists. The denomination “political” was later scrapped by Jevons. This was roughly at the same time when the War Ministries were renamed Defense Ministries.
What the general public does not understand is that there are political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, and the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.
The fraud of economists consists of telling the public that they are doing science while, in fact, they are doing agenda-pushing. The fraud is in the title “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”. There would be no problem at all if the title was “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Propaganda on Behalf of the US Oligarchy”.
With regard to ‘Economic Sciences’, economists are still behind the curve:
• Science manifests itself in the form of the true theory.
• Truth is well-defined by material and formal consistency.
• Logical consistency is secured by applying the axiomatic-deductive method and material consistency is secured by applying state-of-art testing.
• The true theory/model is the humanly best mental representation of reality.
• The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and mutually contradictory.
• Orthodox and heterodox economics is failed/fake/cargo-cult science, i.e. political agenda-pushing without valid scientific foundations.
The “alleviation of global poverty” by the Massachusetts team is politically fictitious and scientifically worthless.
The political reality is that MMT academics claim on the basis of an algebraically false sectoral balances equation that public deficits are beneficial for WeThePeople and that they increase “private wealth” while the analytically correct balances equation says that Public Deficit = Private Profit which is obviously beneficial alone for the Oligarchy.
So, while academic economists pretend with this year’s EconNobel to care about the alleviation of poverty, they politically accept/promote the explosion of the Oligarchy’s financial wealth by exploding the public debt.
Clearly, economists have to be expelled from the scientific community.
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REPLY to Ken Zimmerman on Oct 24You say: “Anthropologists and government policy designers went down this road, fruitlessly 50 years ago. The culture of poverty is a notion in social theory asserting that the values of people experiencing poverty play a significant role in perpetuating their impoverished condition, sustaining a cycle of poverty across generations.” and “If economists were educated beyond economic theories and mathematics and had at least a modicum of curiosity about events around them, they’d know that the work for which these folks [Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer] were awarded a Noble Prize is not either innovative or new.”
Yes, indeed, the culture of poverty is the subject matter of Anthropology/Sociology/ Psychology and other so-called social sciences. No, Psychology, Sociology, etcetera ― PsySoc for short ― is NOT the subject matter of economics. The subject matter of economics is how the economic system works. Economics is a systems science and NOT a social science.#1, #2
The fact is that economics is a failed science. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and ALL got the foundational economic concept ― profit ― wrong. Economists have NO valid theory about how the actual economy works but this does not prevent them from taking part in the political Circus Maximus and giving economic policy advice.#3
There have always been two economixes, political economics, and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, and the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works (= true theory). (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, scientific standards are observed.
The fact is that (i) theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers), and (ii), political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years.#4
Because economics is NOT a science but Oligarchy-sponsored political agenda-pushing, the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” is a deception of the general public since the first EconNobel 50 years ago.#5
It is time to sue the Bank of Sweden for damages and waste of the Swedish people’s money.
#1 Economics is NOT about Human Nature but the economic system
#2 PsySoc — the scourge of economics
#3 Econogenics in action
#4 Economists: scientists or political clowns?
#5 Links on the Economics Nobel
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REPLY to Ken Zimmerman on Oct 28You say “Egmont, thanks for your comments. You’re correct that economists today spend little time or effort studying poverty. But anthropologists and sociologists do.”
In fact, I said that economists spend TOO MUCH time with PsySoc. The subject matter of economics is NOT Human Nature/motives/behavior/action but how the economic system works.
Economists are known to have dabbled in virtually every discipline: Psychology, Sociology, Political Sciences, Geopolitics, Law, History, Anthropology, Social Philosophy, Philosophy, Theology, Pedagogic, Biology/Evolution, and whatnot. This somewhat perverse habit has been called Economics Imperialism. The perversity consists of the fact that economists have utterly failed in their own discipline. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and MMT are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent.
In 200+ years, economics has not risen above the proto-scientific level. For details see Economists: Jacks-of-all-trades ― except economics.
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