Comment on Lars Syll/Tom Hickey on ‘Does it — really — take a model to beat a model?’*
Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference
Lars Syll is in a trap. He is known as a sharp refuter of orthodox economics and one tends to think that if he knows what is wrong with Orthodoxy he would eventually come up with something better. This is NOT the case. During his whole career, Lars Syll never came up with any insights into how the actual economy works. He does not even acknowledge that this is his duty as a scientist and academic teacher.
“A critique yours truly sometimes encounters is that as long as I cannot come up with some own alternative model to the failing mainstream models, I shouldn’t expect people to pay attention. This is, however, to totally and utterly misunderstand the role of philosophy and methodology of economics!”
No, dear critics of Heterodoxy, Lars Syll does not suffer from the hubris to create a superior economic theory, he is merely a humble under-labourer like John Locke: “’tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge.”
How can anyone be so absurd as to think that the self-defined task of scientists is to contribute to the growth of scientific knowledge? In fact, it comes from methodologists, Lars Syll’s colleagues: “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)#1-#4
And this is the trap the under-labourer is in: he has no new theory. However, Lars Syll cannot admit failure and so he quotes Jo Michell approvingly: “It takes a model to beat a model has to be one of the stupider things, in a pretty crowded field, to come out of economics. … I don’t get it. If a model is demonstrably wrong, that should surely be sufficient for rejection. I’m thinking of bridge engineers: ‘look I know they keep falling down but I’m gonna keep building em like this until you come up with a better way, OK?’”
NO, dear methodological imbeciles, surely you can waste your own and everybody else’s time by endlessly repeating that neoclassical economics is rubbish, but take notice that this is known already for a long time and NOT any longer the key issue: “There is another alternative: to formulate a completely new research program and conceptual approach. As we have seen, this is often spoken of, but there is still no indication of what it might mean.” (Ingrao et al., 1990)
Here is the real crux of the matter: “... we may say that the ... omnipresence of a certain point of view is not a sign of excellence or an indication that the truth or part of the truth has at last been found. It is, rather, the indication of a failure of reason to find suitable alternatives ...” (Feyerabend)#5, #6
What gets entirely lost in the Syll/Michell smoke-blowing exercise is that Heterodoxy, too, is rubbish. Lars Syll is a proponent of Keynes and the Post-Keynesians including MMT. He has not realized to this day that Keynes messed up the Paradigm Shift from microfoundations to macrofoundations.#7 So, Lars Syll is NOT merely a humble under-labourer but an active participant in the scientific failure of economics.
Nobody believes in earnest that folks like Lars Syll, Tom Hickey, Jo Michell, Stephanie Kelton, Bill Mitchell, etcetera have any ambition to come up with a scientifically valid new economic theory/model.#8 What they have produced this far proves that they are stupid/corrupt under-labourers of the Oligarchy or, in the metaphor of John Locke “Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge”.#9
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
* Lars P. Syll Blog
#1 Caught in secular intellectual stagnation
#2 Unfit in all dimensions
#3 Throwing soap bubbles at time wasters
#4 Complexity, scientific incompetence, and the art of asking the right questions
#5 How Heterodoxy keeps the Naked-Emperor-Zombie alive
#6 Economics is a scientific zombie waiting to be put down
#7 Get it econ suckers: behavioral microfoundations ⇒ false, systemic macrofoundations ⇒ true
#8 “The highest ambition an economist can entertain who believes in the scientific character of economics would be fulfilled as soon as he succeeded in constructing a simple model displaying all the essential features of the economic process by means of a reasonably small number of equations connecting a reasonably small number of variables. Work on this line is laying the foundations of the economics of the future …” (Schumpeter, 1946)
#9 Economists: scientists or political clowns?
