Economics as rhetoric or...

I agree that econometrics is not the end-all of public
policy. Especially, as FA Hayek brilliantly points out,
that we as individuals, bureaucracies, governments, etc
can never know all or enough information to include all
possible variables that affect people's decisions. For
this same reason, however, we as these people or groups
cannot think that we can outsmart the market (or
individual choices) either. When we do, we provoke
unintended and unavoidable consequences because all people
have their own minds, their own goals, their own
weaknesses, and their own aspirations. Markets do offer
the greatest degree of freedom to all people, for people
to trade with whom they like, to follow their passion to
innovate without the restrictions of others regulating how
and why they are doing what they do. For example, markets
started eliminating the racist institutionalism in the
work force that all-white labor unions (enforced by law)
tried to impose on African-Americans.

~Emily

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:25:18 -0400
Tadit <ideasinc@ee.net> wrote:

There is both good and bad rhetoric, and then there is
self-conscious rhetoric. Mathematics particularly as
abused within Economics is not a substantiation of
scientific status and certification of objective
neutrality. Mathematics is afterall simply a language.
Attempting to implant certain economic models simply by
fiat is at least misleading and nullifying of a
legitimate scientific discourse toward toward either
implicit of explicit goals. Attempting to operate
downstream of such imposed but models ignores economic
history and reality in a fundamental way. The notion
that economics deserves a status next to theology,
effectively denies the possibility of both alternative
models and societal priorities, apart from the familiar
empty genuflection to the familiar icons as
inevitability and divine economic will. Irrationalism
masked as "reason" has its own logic and beneficiaries
that generally pay well to remain undisclosed or
referenced. When economics presumes to influence policy
is has very real stakeholders and usually entirely
dominated by the privileges of wealth over need.




"Most economists do not understand that their
Methodological theory was neve coherent and now has
become a bad old relic. They do not undertand that in
its popular form, unthinkingly applied, positivism
conceals what economics does, especially from
economists. An economist claiming that they endorse only
"Pareto optimal" policies, benefiting everyone
(desireable as such policies are when we can get them),
has mislaid their wider work of moral philosophy. An
economist claiming that they believe only
econometrically certified redults, exactly identified
(satisfying as such results are when we can get them)
has mislaid their wider work of quantitative persuasion.
Economics after modernism (sic positivism) needs a new
way of talking about its work. It needs a place to stand
from which to look back on its models of international
trade and its elasticites of labor supply (as well as
its models of economic development)..." extracted from
the Preface of the book "Knowledge and Persuasion in
Economics" by Deirdre N. McCloskey c 1994

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