September 3, 2020

Bye, bye economic philosophers

Comment on Lars Syll/Tom Hickey on ‘The capital controversy’


What the Cambridge Capital Controversy has proven is that both orthodox and heterodox economists are NOT scientists but brain-dead political agenda pushers.#1

With regard to the CCC, Tom Hickey maintains: “From the perspective of a philosopher, this is a good illustration of why philosophy of economics and philosophy of science, which focus on clarification of concepts, is foundational to the discipline.”

Sort of, but the brute fact of the matter is that neither economists nor philosophers have clarified the foundational economic concept of profit.

Because of this, economics is a scientific failure. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT, and Pluralism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/ formally inconsistent.#3

Not only the representative economist has proven to be scientifically incompetent ― actually, too stupid for elementary algebra ― but also the self-styled philosophers of science.#4, #5

It is a remarkable fact that the champions of scientific methodology never stumbled upon the plain fact that profit is ill-defined, except perhaps for Mirowski: “... one of the most convoluted and muddled areas in economic theory: the theory of profit.”

So, as economics currently goes down the scientific toilet let us by no means forget the philosophers of science.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke



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REPLY to Matt Franko on Sep 3

You say: “It’s not foundational to Economics its foundational to Accounting.”

There is microeconomic accounting and macroeconomic accounting. Macroeconomic profit is foundational to economics because economics is about how the economy works.#1

To think one can understand the economy by studying the mom-and-pop store is known as the Fallacy of Composition. It is a bit like trying to understand the universe by studying a molehill in the backyard.



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REPLY to Matt Franko on Sep 3

You say: “It [accounting] has been ignored (espec.in macro) with a few exceptions (Lerner, Minsky, Godley, Lavoie, Bezemer, and Keen, among a very few others). ”

Accounting is elementary algebra, however, economists don't get it to this day. MMTers are no exception. Here is the proof


Yes, economists incl. MMTers and philosophers of science fail the intelligence test already at the entry level.