Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses

Comment on John T. Harvey on ‘Does Modern Monetary Theory Have Any Scholarly Validity?’

Blog-Reference

Clint Ballinger advertises his latest project: “I am trying to make a non-technical book that the public and students will actually read, and a book that actually that gets all the operational basics right.”

As Simon Wren-Lewis once observed: “Narratives are a way people can try to understand things they know little about, and most people know little about economics or politics.”

This is an accurate observation. Where knowledge is lacking a story fills the void. The media have always been in the business of storytelling. This goes from the so-called Holy Books to Rome’s Circus Maximus to Hollywood to Paul Krugman’s NYT blather to economics supply-demand-equilibrium textbooks.#1

Economics is storytelling since the founding fathers. Adam Smith was NOT a scientist but a storyteller: “… he had no such ambitions; in fact, he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along.” (Schumpeter)

All appearances to the contrary, economics is NOT a science but political agenda pushing. The format of popular propaganda is, of course, NOT the abstract theory but a concrete narrative. For a narrative, there is NO need to satisfy the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency. Basically, a narrative emotionally re-enacts a deep-seated archetype. The three great economic narratives are the story of the Schlauraffen Land of Plenty and Freedom, the story of the Alchemist who transmutes dirt into gold, and the story of the struggle of Capitalists vs Workers.

Economics is failed/fake science. All attempts to make economics a science remained on the surface. The major approaches — Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT — are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got profit ― the foundational concept of the subject matter ― wrong. With the pluralism of provably false theories, economists have not achieved anything of scientific value but produced a lot of talk-show stuff.

So, they blather on and on. To this day, economists are storytellers.#2-#11 Clint Ballinger’s 1000 CASTAWAYS: Fundamentals of Economics is the latest example of populism, i.e. of low-life political agenda pushing. Clint Ballinger is just one of the many economists who explain things in non-technical terms that they do not understand in scientific terms.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Economics and encephalomalacia
#2 Economics: ‘a tale told by an idiot ... signifying nothing’
#3 Storytelling vs Theory = Politics vs Science
#4 The economist as storyteller
#5 Narrative economics and the imperatives of the sitcom
#6 Economics: stories, narratives, and disinformation
#7 Media-fake-farce-fraud-storytelling-macro
#8 How to save the economy from storytelling economists
#9 The end of storytelling
#10 Politics, storytelling, and science
#11 Economics — from storytelling to science

Related 'Economists cannot do the simple math of profit — better keep them out of politics' and 'New Economic Thinking, or, let’s put lipstick on the dead pig' and 'Does Asad Zaman fly with POL or SCI Airlines?' and 'The long genealogical tree of economic storytelling' and 'A political stench is in the air' and 'Macroeconomics: Drain the scientific swamp' and 'Profit Theory in less than 5 minutes' and 'Scientists and science actors' and 'The economist as second-guesser, mind reader, and folk psychologist' and 'Employment theory as an example of proto-scientific soapbubbling' and 'Economics: communication without content' and 'Ricardo and the invention of class war' and 'The Law of Economists’ Increasing Stupidity' and 'Wrapping up the MMT narrative' and 'MMT and the overall political corruption of economics' and 'MMT: How the Oligarchy communicates with WeThePeople' and 'MMTers are NOT Friends-of-the-People' and 'The Kelton-Fraud' and 'Krugman and the scientific implosion of economics' and 'End of a storyteller' and 'Storytelling and facts' and 'Around the world: storytelling vs. science' and 'The consistent ancients and the confused moderns' and 'The intelligent layperson's guide through vacuonomics' and 'Low-IQ economics: the beginner’s guide' and 'Entertainment vs. Science' and 'The economist as stand-up comedian' and '10 steps to leave cargo cult economics behind for good' and 'Economics textbooks ― tombstones at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery' and 'Mad but true: 200+ years after Adam Smith economists still have no idea what profit is' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion'. For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption.

***

Twitter/X Mar 23, 2024 Michael Hudson on science fiction

Occasional Tweets: Economists are not scientists but storytellers (V)

 

#Econ

Economics claims to be #Science but is NOT. The representative #Economist is NOT a #Scientist but an #AgendaPusher / #StoryTeller / #Clown in the political #CircusMaximus. It started 200+ years ago, today #Economics is an integral part of the #DisInfoTainment industry.

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) July 20, 2023

Related 'The economist as storyteller (I)' and  'The economist as storyteller (II)'.

If you meet the storyteller on the road, kill him

Comment on Blissex on ‘We Are so S---ed. Econ 1-Level Edition’

Blog-Reference

You write: “I am sympathetic to any model which is less comically weak than the usual ‘neoclassical synthesis’ and other politically motivated propaganda, but here I am more pleased than usual because ...”

Note, that science is NOT about like/dislike but about true/false. If economics is, as it claims for more than 200 years to be, a science, then we have only one worthwhile issue: is standard economics true or false? The answer is that it is provably false according to well-defined scientific criteria.

This has several implications: (i) economists like Krugman or DeLong have not realized that their models are logically/empirically inconsistent, (ii) they pass their defective approaches on to their students, (iii) they throw economic policy proposals into the discussion that have no scientific foundation. From the standpoint of science, economics produces a vast amount of disutility.

Re-read the preceding posts, including your own, and you will realize that economics has come down to a narrative of fraud, deceit, corruption, and crime; with the greedy plutocracy, the Fed money wizards, the duped working class, and the evil tax-state as main protagonists.

To recall, this is how the ancient Greeks explained the world before they invented science: Zeus oversaw the universe, assigned the various gods their roles, and had a lot of trouble with other gods, goddesses, and humans. At Prometheus, for example, he was angry for three things: being tricked on sacrifices, stealing fire for man, and refusing to tell him which of his children would dethrone him. To handle his problems, Zeus regularly fell back to chicanery, force, and violence.#1

Everybody can see the common pattern. Economics is still at the level of myth and storytelling. The difference is, instead of Zeus we now have the Invisible Hand and the machinations of economic agents. People like this tabloid stuff.

To recall: “... it is a central aim of science to come to knowledge of how the world really is, that correspondence between theories and reality is a central aim of science as an epistemic enterprise and crucial to whatever objectivity scientific knowledge enjoys ...” (Suppe, 1977, p. 649)

The task of economics is to come to objective knowledge of how the economy really is. It is the economic system that is the subject matter and NOT the machinations of a more or less realistic homo oeconomicus.

Most economists have not yet realized that economics is NOT a science of human nature/behavior/action — not of individual behavior, not of social behavior, not of rational behavior, not of irrational behavior, not of sincerity, not of corruption. All these issues belong entirely to the realms of psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, history, criminology, philosophy, etcetera.

Economics is the science of how the economic system works (2014). So, first of all, we have to get rid of all storytellers, more precisely, of Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and their proto-scientific garbage — NOT because we do not LIKE these approaches but because they are provably FALSE.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2014). Objective Principles of Economics. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2418851: 1–19. URL
Suppe, F. (1977). Afterword–1977. In F. Suppe (Ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories, 615–730. Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

#1 Wikipedia

Immediately preceding Econ 101 or How to train morons.

For more about storyteller see AXECquery.

For more about narrative see AXECquery.

The economist as storyteller (I)

Comment on Chris Dillow on ‘Why not full employment?’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Apr 26 and Blog-Reference on Apr 28 adapted to context

The average person dislikes an objective explanation (e.g., the thunderbolt is an electromagnetic phenomenon subject to physical laws) and likes a subjective explanation (e.g., Zeus threw the thunderbolt because he was angry/vengeful/authoritarian). The scientific explanation takes the form of a theory, and the non-scientific explanation takes the form of a narrative. Almost all societal communication consists of storytelling/blather/ wish-wash/truisms, and only a tiny part has scientific content.

Economics claims to be a science, yet it has never risen above the level of storytelling. Accordingly, the subjective explanation of unemployment (UE) takes the following forms.

Psychologism: the unemployed actually enjoy UE, are indifferent, have resigned, or suffer. Darwinism: UE’s are unfit, unqualified, lack motivation, and are beyond help. Moral hazard: UE is the result of a wrong incentive structure or perverted rewards/punishments, UE’s game the system. Mind reading: leisure is rationally preferred by UE’s over working at the given wage. Moralizing: the UE’s deserve their fate. Blaming: UE is a self-inflicted blowback of irrational behavior, i.e., of sticky wages, strikes, and shirking. Historicism: today’s unemployment is the result of known adverse external shocks and identifiable wrongheaded measures of DEMs/REPs/FED/GOV since WWII. Sociologism: the UE’s do not have enough leverage for changes in their favor; they are brainwashed into acceptance of everything. UE is deliberately created by capitalists/oligarchs/one-percenters/government as a means of social control. UE’s are the losers in a rigged power play.

Within this tiny intellectual box of folk psychology, folk sociology, folk history, and folk politics, economic storytelling has taken place since Adam Smith: “He ... disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along.” (Schumpeter)

The time travel fantasies about Harlem, Haight-Ashbury, Paris, or Surbiton above show that economics has stagnated since Adam Smith. Clearly, from retarded storytellers, no solution to any economic problem is ever to be expected.

While dabbling in the so-called social sciences, economists overlooked that economics is a systems science and that it is their task to explain how the actual monetary economy works. To this day, economists still need to understand what profit is. It should be evident that they will never find it out by second-guessing, interpreting, and understanding human behavior. This is NOT how science works. What is currently discussed among economists as employment theory is sitcom garbage.

Storytelling is not prohibited, of course, and neither is the pluralism of any number of false theories, but there is no place for storytellers in the sciences. So, economists have to stop pretending to do science and have to be expelled from the sciences because of proven incompetence for more than 200 years.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


Related 'Why do workers not tar and feather economists?' and 'Economics, methodology, morals ― a creepy freak-show' and 'The economist as storyteller (II)' and 'Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses' and 'Narrative economics and the imperatives of the sitcom' and 'If religion is opium of the people, economics is crack of the people' and 'Economics: Stories, narratives, and disinformation' and 'Economic narratives are for the scientific garbage dump' and 'Media-fake-farce-fraud-storytelling-macro'.

For details about the axiomatically correct employment theory, see cross-references Employment.

***

Graphic AXEC139e

Occasional Tweets: Mission Economy ― a PR shot in the foot

 

Mariana Mazzucato chooses as an icon for her “Mission Economy” the waving-moon-flag whose authenticity is disputed for good scientific reasons. That's self-defeating.

The #NapoleonRule says “When there are serious scientific problems to solve, keep economists out of the way.” pic.twitter.com/sIeJLnltL0

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) January 31, 2021

Economists as clowns and useful idiots

• Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion
• The economist as storyteller (I)
• The economist as storyteller (II)
• Have we reached the bottom of gossip economics?
• Gossip economics
• Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
• Economics: Stories, narratives, and disinformation

Narrative economics and the imperatives of the sitcom

Comment on Tim Taylor on ‘Narrative Economics and the Laffer Curve’

Blog-Reference

Tim Taylor summarizes, “Shiller’s broad point was that the key distinguishing trait of human beings may be that we organize what we know in the form of stories.”

This is slightly incorrect. It is morons who can only grasp stories; human beings in the full sense organize knowledge in the form of scientific theories. This is known since the ancient Greeks introduced the distinction between opinion (= doxa) and knowledge (= episteme). The fact of the matter is that ― as a rule of thumb ― one per cent of a population fits the description of a scientist = human being.

Obviously, Robert Shiller and Tim Taylor are 2700+ years behind the curve: “There are always many different opinions and conventions concerning any one problem or subject-matter (such as the gods). This shows that they are not all true. For if they conflict, then at best only one of them can be true. Thus it appears that Parmenides ... was the first to distinguish clearly between truth or reality on the one hand, and convention or conventional opinion (hearsay, plausible myth) on the other ...” (Popper, 1994)

Plausible myth, narrative, hearsay, story, and common sense are simply euphemisms for proto-scientific garbage.

The average person dislikes an objective explanation (e.g. the thunderbolt is an electromagnetic phenomenon subject to physical laws) and likes a subjective explanation (e.g. Zeus threw the thunderbolt because he was angry/vengeful/authoritarian). The scientific explanation takes the form of a theory, and the non-scientific explanation takes the form of an emotionally reinforced narrative. Almost all societal communication consists of storytelling/blather/wish-wash/truisms/BS, and only a tiny part has scientific content.

Economics claims to be a science, yet it has never risen above the level of storytelling. What we have is the narrative of how the Invisible Hand of supply-demand-equilibrium (S-D-E) turns all to the best ― in the long run. Note well that in 200+ years, NO proof of this claim has been presented. General equilibrium theory is one of the worst failures in the history of scientific thought.

Within the tiny box of folk psychology, folk sociology, folk history, and folk politics, economic storytelling has taken place since Adam Smith: “Smith ... disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along.” (Schumpeter)

Storytelling is the natural form of communication of confused confusers, and the sitcom is the format the general public wants economics to be presented in. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism survive only as social narratives and not as scientifically valid representations of reality.

Storytelling is not prohibited, of course, but there is no place for storytellers in the sciences. So, both orthodox and heterodox economic storytellers have to leave economics now for good because of proven scientific incompetence. This includes Robert Shiller and Tim Taylor.

It is the task of the economist as a scientist to figure out how the economy works and NOT to appear in sitcoms and spoon-feed morons with silly narratives.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


Related 'Economics for philosophers' and 'The market economy is inherently unstable and economists never grasped it' and 'The economist as storyteller' and 'If You Meet the Storyteller on the Road, Kill Him' and 'The monstrous utility-supply-demand-equilibrium failure' and 'Economics and the weapons of mass distraction' and 'How to creatively destruct Orthodoxy' and 'Economists cannot do the simple math of profit — better keep them out of politics' and 'Marshall: a monument of scientific incompetence' and 'The economist as stand-up comedian' and 'New economic thinking, or, let’s put lipstick on the dead pig' and 'Economics: communication without content' and 'Economics has arrived at the bottom of the proto-scientific shithole' and 'Why is economics a total scientific failure?' and 'Links on Diane Coyle' and 'What’s the trouble with some Canadian economists?' and 'Economic narratives are for the scientific garbage dump'.

***

World Economic Forum, Dec 5, 2021, Bruce Wydick, How narratives influence human behaviour

***

Graphic AXEC108l

Economics: ‘a tale told by an idiot ... signifying nothing’

Comment on Brad DeLong on ‘More Musings on the Fall of the House of Uncle Milton’

Blog-Reference

A fatal problem of economics, in particular, is that the format of communication is predetermined by the operational specifics of the entertainment industry, that is, all communication must take the form of an interesting story or a sitcom controversy full of sound and fury. The all-decisive criterion in the realm of entertainment is like/dislike and not true/false as it is in science.

Economics always claimed to be a science. Clearly, political economics from Marx to Keynes to Hayek to Friedman never was, it has been politics using and abusing economic theory to push an agenda. But someday in the history of economic thought economists left science altogether and became part of the entertainment industry. Thinking, of which there was never much in the first place, has now been entirely replaced by storytelling and gossip.

Accordingly, Krugman and DeLong present the history of Monetarism/Keynesianism in sitcom terms as funny encounters of the known characters Uncle Milton, Aunt Rand, the gold-bugs, Austrians, and ‘the Lucases and the Prescotts and the Cochranes and the Famas and the Boldrins and the Levines and the Steils and the Taylors and all the others and even the Zingaleses’.

There is not much to say about moronomics except for the fact that economists still uphold the claim that they are doing science. How so? Krugman explains: “Hicksian macro — IS-LM or something like it — remains an extremely useful tool of both analysis and policy formulation.” (See intro)

Not so! ALL I=S/IS-LM models are provably false since Hicks, and Krugman has not gotten the point until this day.#1 Provable means that this is not a matter of taste or opinion or wish-wash, but of straightforward mathematical proof.

The economy is a rather abstract entity and its working is not visible to the naked eye. What is needed to get reality into focus is the third eye of theory. Scientific abstraction, though, is not exactly the business of the entertainment industry, but Uncle Milton and storytelling Paul and gossiping Brad are.

With Friedman and the Chicagoans, economics has been at the level of low-IQ political blather of Hayekian descent but over the years the Pauls and Brads have morphed it into pure Circus Maximus.

There remains only one thing to do: to expel economics officially from the sciences.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Mr. Keynes, Prof. Krugman, IS-LM, and the End of Economics as We Know It

Related 'Econ 101 or How to train morons' and 'If You Meet the Storyteller on the Road, Kill Him' and 'The economist as storyteller' and 'Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion'. For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption.

Economic narratives are for the scientific garbage dump

Comment on Maria Popova on ‘How Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe’*

Own post, Twitter-Reference

To recall, science is about true/false and nothing else. Strictly speaking, it is NOT the task of science to convince the “scientifically illiterate public.” The acceptance of a theory depends alone on the proof of material/formal consistency and NOT on the approval of the general public or the number of followers on Twitter. Storytelling, on the other hand, has been the tool of religious/political fraudsters since they put down their fake accounts of creation and evolution/history in their so-called holy books. To put the scientist Kepler at one level with religious/political impostors is an absolute disgrace.

“In 1609, Johannes Kepler finished the first work of genuine science fiction — that is, imaginative storytelling in which sensical science is a major plot device. Somnium, or The Dream, is the fictional account of a young astronomer who voyages to the Moon. Rich in both scientific ingenuity and symbolic play, it is at once a masterwork of the literary imagination and an invaluable scientific document, all the more impressive for the fact that it was written before Galileo pointed the first spyglass at the sky and before Kepler himself had ever looked through a telescope. Kepler knew what we habitually forget — that the locus of possibility expands when the unimaginable is imagined and then made real through systematic effort.”

To call Somnium a piece of “imaginative storytelling” is tempting but utterly misleading. Somnium is an example of a thought experiment. And Kepler drives home the crucial point of the exercise: “Everyone says it is plain that the stars go around the earth while the Earth remains still. I say that it is plain to the eyes of the lunar people that our Earth, which is their Volva, goes around while their moon is still. If it be said that the lunatic perceptions of my moon-dwellers are deceived, I retort with equal justice that the terrestrial senses of the Earth-dwellers are devoid of reason.”

So, the use of the thought experiment is to clarify a feature of the real world. It is a consistent abstraction that gets closer to reality. A narrative, on the other hand, is an inconsistent fantasy that leads away from reality. This is what science fiction does. It is therefore misleading to call Kepler an inventor of science fiction or a storyteller.

“Like any currency of value, the human imagination is a coin with two inseparable sides. It is our faculty of fancy that fills the disquieting gaps of the unknown with the tranquilizing certitudes of myth and superstition, that points to magic and witchcraft when common sense and reason fail to unveil causality. But that selfsame faculty is also what leads us to rise above accepted facts, above the limits of the possible established by custom and convention, and reach for new summits of previously unimagined truth. Which way the coin flips depends on the degree of courage, determined by some incalculable combination of nature, culture, and character.”

Right, there is progressive use of abstraction and regressive use. The latter is characteristic of economics. Economic storytelling is not applied to enlighten the general public but to deceive it. The deeper reason is that economics is not a science but for 200+ years now political agenda pushing in the mantle of science. Economics suffers since the founding fathers from the Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction.

“By the time of Astronomia nova, Kepler had ample mathematical evidence affirming Copernicus’s theory. But he realized something crucial and abiding about human psychology: The scientific proof was too complex, too cumbersome, too abstract to persuade even his peers, much less the scientifically illiterate public; it wasn’t data that would dismantle their celestial parochialism, but storytelling.”

It is just the opposite in economics. There is much storytelling but neither mathematical nor empirical evidence for any of the major approaches, i.e. for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, or MMT. Narrative economics is proto-scientific garbage.

For more details see

• Narrative economics and the imperatives of the sitcom
• Economics: stories, narratives, and disinformation
• How the representative economist gets it wrong big-time
• Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
• Economics is not science, not religion, but proto-scientific garbage
• If religion is opium of the people, economics is crack of the people
• Media-fake-farce-fraud-storytelling-macro
• The economist as storyteller
• Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion
• The apocalypse of stupidity
• Economics ― the science that never was
• How to spot economics trolls
• Cross-references Scientific Incompetence

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


* brainpickings

Related 'How economists became the scientific laughing stock' and 'Econogenics: economists pose a hazard to their fellow citizens' and 'Economics is a science? You must be joking!' and 'The economist as stand-up comedian' and 'Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times' and 'Macroeconomics: Economists are too stupid for science' and 'Links on the Economics Nobel'.

***

Twitter Dec 29

The economist as storyteller (II)

Comment on Caitlin Johnstone on ‘Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems’*

Blog-Reference

There is the infinite reality and there is the limited individual consciousness, and between the two is a medium. This epistemological condition has been captured by Plato in the Allegory of the Cave: “Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners. The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison; for they know no better life.”#1

The situation has not fundamentally changed since the ancient Greeks. Newspapers, radio, TV, and social media only multiply the shadows on the blank wall. The situation is summarized with the graph AXEC153.#2

There are three relationships between reality and consciousness:
(i) Faithful mapping from A-reality to A'-consciousness.
(ii) Reduction of B-reality to zero, i.e., to conscious non-existence.
(iii) Blowing up NONENTITIES to predominant C'-consciousness.

Alternative (i) is what science/philosophy is supposed to achieve. Alternatives (ii) and (iii) constitute the prisoners’ manufactured reality. As physical force is applied in order to control the physical realm, communicative force is applied to control the mental realm. This communicative force is called propaganda, and it comes either under the religious, political, or entertainment cloak.#3 In the real world, both forces are of roughly equal importance. Professional storytellers (historians, priests, romancers, journalists, movie makers) tend to think that the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’: “As I never tire of saying, the real underlying currency in our world is not gold, nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military might. The real underlying currency of our world is narrative, and the ability to control it.”

Maintaining narrative control is also the main business of the economist. #4, #5, #6, #7, #8

Scientific truth has two inseparable methodological components: material and formal consistency. This, of, course, holds also for economics: “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. Economics has been a fake science since Adam Smith. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, etc, ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got profit ― the foundational concept of the subject matter ― wrong.

Economists have produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. This does not matter much, though, because, in the political Circus Maximus, there has always been a greater demand for storytellers, blatherers, trolls, actors, clowns, activists, and propagandists than for scientists. Scientific truth has never been a concern for religion, politics, and entertainment ― just the opposite. This is why human communication consists, for the greater part, approximately 99.9 percent of toxic mental garbage a.k.a. propaganda/disinformation/entertainment a.k.a. disinfotainment.

As failed scientists, economists easily get a second chance, for example, as exhibitionists of the Conscience of a Liberal in a propaganda outlet of the Oligarchy or as an Oligarchy-sponsored troll in the econblogosphere.

Time for a dishonorable discharge of these stupid/corrupt storytellers from the sciences.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


* Caitlin Johnstone
#1 Wikipedia Allegory of the Cave
#2 Graphic AXEC153 Allegory of the Cave
#3 “Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, and the media can also produce propaganda.
In the twentieth century, the term propaganda has often been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically was a neutral descriptive term.” (Wikipedia)
#4 Economics, Plato’s Cave and the Silver Blaze Case
#5 Economics: communication without content
#6 Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
#7 MMT: How the Oligarchy communicates with WeThePeople
#8 Narrative economics and the imperatives of the sitcom

Related 'Are economics professors really that incompetent? Yes!' and 'Economics textbooks ― tombstones at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery' and 'Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times' and 'Macroeconomics: Economists are too stupid for science' and 'Are economists natural-born scientific failures?' and 'Fact of life: your econ prof is scientifically incompetent' and 'Fake religion, fake science, fake news, and false complaints' and 'Dear idiots, MMTers are Wall Street’s agenda pushers' and '“We have sunk very low”' and 'FakeNews, FakeScience: economics in the information age' and 'Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses' and 'A brief history of soapbox economics' and 'If You Meet the Storyteller on the Road, Kill Him' and 'Economics: ‘a tale told by an idiot ... signifying nothing’ and 'The economist as stand-up comedian' and 'Economics: No method to the madness' and 'How to spot economics trolls' and 'Lock them up' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion'.

***

This is what Plato said in The Republic about stories: “… which are now in use [but] must be discarded.”

“Of what tales are you speaking? he said. …
Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of the poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of mankind.
But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them?
A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie.”

***

AXEC139d

Why is economics such a scientific embarrassment?

Comment on Christopher Snyder on ‘What are economists for?’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Economics is a failed science because economists are scientifically incompetent. This applies to both the orthodox and heterodox species. Heterodox economists persistently point at what they regard as the unacceptable portions of Orthodoxy but they have not come up with a valid alternative since Jevons/Walras/Menger.

Christopher Snyder defines economics thus: “One short answer is that economics is the social science focusing on people’s material well-being, the ‘business side’ of life.”

Christopher Snyder still clings to the fatal error of the founding fathers, i.e., that economics is a so-called social science. Obviously, he has not heard that Feynman has debunked the so-called social sciences wholesale as cargo cult sciences: “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.”

Economists, to begin with, lack a real understanding of science, they are cargo cult scientists. For the general public, it is important to know that there are TWO economixes: political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, 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.

Economic policy presupposes knowledge of how the economic system works. This knowledge is embodied in the true theory: “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)

Because of the lack of the true theory the policy guidance of economists ― Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, Austrians, MMTers, and Pluralists ― has NO sound scientific foundations.#1

Economics had the bad luck to start as Political Economy. This means that the political agenda had been given and the argumentation had to support the agenda. Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). The methodological Ur-Blunder of economics consists of defining economics as a social science. Economics is a systems science.

Supply-demand-equilibrium economists are in a state of incorrigible self-delusion/idiocy/ corruption. They do not know what science is and ignore or even actively suppress refutation. As Morgenstern reminded his fellow economists back in 1941: “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.”

From the standpoint of science, the economist is worse than the snake oil seller and fraudster because as a fake scientist he causes severe economic damages.#2 This is known since Napoleon: “Late in life… he claimed that he had always believed that if an empire were made of granite the ideas of economists if listened to, would suffice to reduce it to dust.” (Viner)

Economics is NOT a science. Both orthodox and heterodox economics is just storytelling. There is neither material nor formal consistency. The ultimate cause of failure is the scientific incompetence of economists since Adam Smith.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Why economists don’t know what profit is
#2 Mass unemployment: The joint failure of orthodox and heterodox economics

Related 'The economist as storyteller' and 'Solving Mill’s starting problem' and 'The new macroeconomic paradigm' and 'Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times' and 'Finally, the embarrassment of economics is over' and 'Econogenics: economists pose a hazard to their fellow citizens' and 'Mission accomplished: Economists as useful idiots of the Oligarchy'.

***

Graphic AXEC158 Economics is fake science

Occasional Tweets: Close cousins ― economics and literary forgery

 

#Economics#FakeScience

Economic history and the history of economic thought are tightly interconnected literary forgeries. Their scientific content is zero bc of the lack of true (materially/formally consistent) theory.
The economist as storyteller (II)https://t.co/1XnmKQexei

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) September 7, 2022

Econ 101: Economists flunk the intelligence test at the first hurdle

Links on John Warner on ‘Indoctrinated by Econ 101’†

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

There is no such thing as economics. There are 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. (ii) In political economics, anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.

Theoretical economics (= science) has been hijacked early on by political agenda pushers.

Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong. Economics is a failed/fake science.

But there is nothing to worry about with regard to education. It is a fact that economics students swallow proto-scientific garbage hook, line, and sinker for generations. They are not particularly smart. Whoever accepts supply-demand-equilibrium as an explanation of how the market system works flunks the entry-level intelligence test of science.

For details, see:

• Are economics professors really that incompetent? Yes!
• The economist as storyteller
• To this day, economists have produced NOT ONE textbook that satisfies scientific standards
• Economics textbooks ― tombstones at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery
• Econ 101: supply-demand-equilibrium is dead for 150+ years
• The real trouble with Econ 101
• How to overcome the manifest silliness of Econ 101 and save the economy
• Econ 101: Dull teachers and dull students in the endless loop
• The disutility of debunking Econ 101
• What’s wrong with Econ 101? Economists, of course!
• Economism, vulgar economics, and the curse of goofy critics
• Econ 101 — worse than useless
• Econ 101 or How to train morons
• How to get out of the Econ 101 PsySoc woods
• Economists still don’t get Econ 101 right
• Econ 101 is dead ― and now?
• Methodology 101, economic filibuster, and the mother of all excuses
• Economics: Two centuries of scientific incompetence
• False on principle
• There is NO such thing as “smart, honest, honorable economists”
  
• The tragedy of economics: stupid/corrupt economists
• For details of the big picture, see cross-references Econ 101/Old Curriculum/New Curriculum

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


† Inside Higher Ed

Related 'Mad but true: 200+ years after Adam Smith economists still have no idea what profit is' and 'Fact of life: Your econ prof is scientifically incompetent' and 'The economist’s pick: liar, moron or what?' and 'The false foundations of economics' and 'How the Intelligent Non-Economist Can Refute Every Economist Hands Down' and 'The real problem with the economics Nobel' and 'Econogenics in action' and 'Bang — the representative economist and supply-demand-equilibrium are dead' and 'Let's bury economics now' and 'The GDP-death-blow for the economics profession' and 'Profit: The most powerful formula of economics' and 'The new economic Paradigm requires a new textbook'.

***

AXEC144c

***

Twitter May 11, 2021 Constrained optimization: the making of an economist

Twitter May 15, 2022 No idea how the economy works

Twitter Dec 29, 2022

Occasional Tweets: Economics • Communication • Disinfotainment (I)

#Economics

#FailedScience

#FakeScience

#MetaCommunication

#EconTwitter

#Economists have no idea how the #Economy works. So they communicate self-referentially about whether their communication is fine/toxic. ⇒

Economics: communication without content

***

***

Communication / Disinfotainment

• How Adam Smith messed up economics
• Gossip economics
• Economics, communication, disinformation
• Heterodox economics ― stupidity, masochism, or disinformation?
• Economics: Stories, narratives, and disinformation
• Economic narratives cause severe mental damage
• Economists are NOT scientists but stupid/corrupt storytellers
• Not all academic pursuits are science
• Economic narratives are for the scientific garbage dump
• Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion
• Profit analysis ― another exercise in economic deception
• How to spot economics trolls
• The economist as storyteller
• Dialectic: the swampies’ methodology of choice
• If religion is opium of the people, economics is crack of the people
• Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
• Urgent: Taking politics out of economics
• Economics: A pointless left-right wrestling show
• You don’t see what you don’t see: censorship in the econblogosphere
• The inexorable Paradigm Shift in economics
• Beware of the moralizing economist
• Supply-demand-equilibrium ― employment theory as an example of proto-scientific soap bubbling
• The Supreme Being handed over these Twelve Economics Commandments
• Ricardo, too, got profit theory wrong
• Economics for believers
• Again and again: economists are incompetent scientists
• This is New Economic Thinking? Give me a break!
• On econblogosphere bias
• Economics is NOT a misunderstanding but cargo cultic crap
• Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?
• Economics ― worse than fake
• Economics ― a Zombie wrestling show
• FakeNews, FakeScience: economics in the information age
• Economics: Science or cheap talk?

For more about disinfotainment see AXECquery.

Let's bury economics now

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Michael Woodford on models’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference Aug 14

Lars Syll argues against Michael Woodford: “This is — sad to say — a rather typical view among mainstream economists today. Defending the use of unrealistic and unsubstantiated models with the argument that models make it ‘easy for others to see what assumptions have been relied upon, and hence to challenge them’ is rather far-fetched.”

Yes, “unrealistic and unsubstantiated models” are indefensible. Yes, mainstream economics is proto-scientific garbage. Yes, mainstreamer are in the “story-telling business”.#1

Yes, yes, yes. All this is known for 150+ years. Yes, economics is failed/fake science. Yes, economists are stupid or corrupt or both. Yes, this applies in equal measure to Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. It applies to economics in general and to Lars Syll, in particular.#2

The most important thing to realize is that there are theoretical economics and political economics. Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. Economic policy NEVER has had sound scientific foundations.

Both orthodox and heterodox economists are NOT scientists but clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus.#3, #4

The representative economist does not understand to this day what science is all about. So, here are eleven plain facts about ‘economic sciences’

1. Science manifests itself in the form of the true theory. 2. Truth is well-defined by material and formal consistency. 3. Logical consistency is secured by applying the axiomatic-deductive method and material consistency is secured by applying state-of-the-art testing. 4. The true theory/model is the humanly best mental representation of reality. 5. “When the premises are certain, true, and primary, and the conclusion formally follows from them, this is demonstration, and produces scientific knowledge of a thing.” (Aristotle, 300 BC)  6. The main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational economic concept of profit wrong. 7. Because the foundations are false the analytical superstructure is false. 8. Economists are too stupid for elementary algebra. 9. Both orthodox and heterodox economics is failed/fake science. 10. Economic policy has no sound scientific foundations. 11. The EconNobel for ‘economic sciences’ is a fraud.

And this is the cause of the mess: economists have since the founding fathers consistently violated the separation of science and politics. In hashtags

#LawOfTheExcludedMiddle

#TheScientistIsNoActivist

#TheActivistIsNoScientist

#PoliticsCorruptsScience.

All this is known and needs no repetition. The consequence is: Economics and economists go directly to the Flat-Earth-Cemetery.

What next? Craig thinks he has a brilliant idea: “Paradigms, especially extremely relevant and urgently needed new paradigms are everything.” Yes, this is also known for a long time: “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)

Except that the Paradigm Shift from provably false Walrasian microfoundations and provably false Keynesian macrofoundations to true macrofoundations is an accomplished fact.#5

And now, Lars Syll and all the other agenda-pushers/activists lead your own funeral cortege!

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 The economist as storyteller (II)

#2 Lars Syll is refuted on all counts. See blog query for details

#3 The tragedy of economics: stupid/corrupt economists

#4 Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times

#5 Sovereign Economics BoD

Related 'Separation of politics and economics'.

***

AXEC136g

MMT: The communicative war on budget balancers

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘A leopard never changes its spots ― Jens Weidmann, ECB President aspirant’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

The MMT policy of deficit-spending/money-creation clearly benefits the Oligarchy because it increases macroeconomic profit according to the Profit Law that entails Public Deficit = Private Profit. Thus the Oligarchy’s financial wealth and public debt (currently $22 trillion in the U.S. alone#1) grow in lockstep. MMT policy is disastrous for distribution.

It is MMT’s global mission to keep this business going. The three communicative tools are (i) false solidarity with and false promises for WeThePeople, (ii) belittlement of future negative consequences, and (iii), slandering the budget balancers.

Some days ago it was the Labour leadership who even dares to speak of a relative reduction of public debt: “at the end of every Parliament, Government debt as a proportion of trend GDP is lower than it was at the start.”#2

This is absolutely antithetical to MMT as a joint venture of Academia and Wall Street.#3 In order to get the Central Bank, i.e. the Means of Production of Currency, into the Oligarchy’s hands, the fake scientists/useful idiots of MMT incite Populism: “If there’s anything the establishment fears more than the working classes seizing the means of production, it’s the working classes seizing the means of production of currency. You would think that socialists would understand that.”

But undermining UK Labour leadership is merely a finger exercise compared to undermining the ECB leadership: “So Europe is back to its Franco-German rivalry and emerging out of that process is the unthinkable ― Bundesbank President, Jens Weidmann ― becoming a front-runner to take over the ECB role. He is a man with a past and his current ‘political’ statements, as he lobbies for the position he clearly covets, appear to contradict that past. A leopard never changes its spots. Beware.”

What provokes the ire of the MMT loudspeaker Bill Mitchell more than anything else is Mr. Weidmann’s statement: “Central bank funding must not become entrenched as a catch-all solution to all our woes.” because this is exactly the fundamental tenet of MMT which has ONE solution for ALL economic/social problems: deficit-spending/money-creation.#4 In the eyes of MMT agenda pushers, Mr. Weidmann disqualifies himself by declaring that he intends to respect the law that defines the ECB’s mandate: “… we have to ensure that the prohibition of monetary financing is respected.”

This impertinence kicks Bill Mitchell into hyperventilation: “That is all on the public record.” Accordingly, “Jens Weidmann should be forced to explain to all and sundry why he is a suitable ECB President given his past claims about ECB policy, which, as he admits, remains ‘current’, and which he would be responsible for.”

It should be obvious that Mr. Weidmann will NOT get MMT’s approval even if he admits that he was wrong then but has now converted to MMT: “The reality is that he was wrong in the first place and his predictions and resistance were reflecting the German inflation angst and the application of flawed mainstream macroeconomics.”

Because “… that doesn’t alter the point.” The point being, once a Swabian housewife ― always a Swabian housewife. Those folks are the worst enemies of the deficit-spenders/ money-creators of MMT and other useful idiots of the Oligarchy.#5

Note well that MMT macroeconomics is refuted on all counts#6 and that Bill Mitchell is a scientifically incompetent academic.#7

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Infographic Visual Capitalist

Source: Visual Capitalist

#2 MMT has an offer that Labour cannot refuse
#3 MMT: The fusion of Wall Street and Academia
#4 MMT: If you’ve got a problem, I don’t care what it is, let me help
#5 MMT’s true program
#6 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
#7 There is NO such thing as “smart, honest, honorable economists”

Related 'Economic policy and the skirmishes of failed/fake scientists' and 'The economist as storyteller' and 'Are economics professors really that incompetent? Yes!' and 'MMT: doom or survival?' and 'Bill Mitchell cracks the spending whip over the Swabian housewife' and 'Swabian housewife vs Wall Street loan shark' and 'Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump, Biden and exploding profit'.

***

Twitter Oct 20, 2021, Jens Weidmann, another obstacle to the takeover of the means of production of currency vanishes

Twitter Oct 20