Mostly Bollogs, I'm afraid

But occasionally, a glimmer of truth.
If you find one, please let me know.



Friday 19 February 2010

Economics is bollocks, isn't it?

Economics is apparently a social science. Wiki says so, so it must be true.

I don't think it works. Science, traditionally, is something which has a method for determining facts. Social science is a means of predicting what something will probably do. It has to be based on a number of factors, including what people will do, which is unpredictable in the extreme, and history, which usually repeats itself.

It seems to me that a person with no training in this black art has a better chance of knowing what will happen than the person trained in it.

The reason for my supposition is merely that I, and many others, knew a long time ago that if you base a socio-economic system upon the premise that tomorrow it will all be lovely, when you can see that it is actually going down the toilet, then it will all turn to ratshit. Which it has, so QED etc.

The reason for my thinking that the training isn't helping is that people can get degrees in politics (Millipede has two, for example) by learning from people who have never done any of it.

I know a lot about this from other areas. I know, for instance, that someone who comes to us from "Uni" with a relevant degree is going to be very disappointed to find that they will have to unlearn all the bollocks they've been taught before we can start to make them useful. And that is sad.

Frank Davis in his blog today has written an excellent piece, well worth reading, about "us and them". He makes the point, and better than I could, that each of us is a small member of a bigger whole, but each has specific needs, ambitions, etc. Were this not the case, life would be dull.

The statist mob that control and rule us, you know, the ones who "work for us", need us all to do and be the same. They try. But they can't make us want the same, or like the same.

Take fox hunting. I don't really give a bollocks. I go with Bill Bailey who says that he doesn't really have a problem with the fox thing, but really has a problem with chaps dressing up in pink and going "Tally-Ho". But I really don't give a toss, although I think foxes are more doggy than ratty. What I do care about is freedom of choice.

There are those who will now vote for New Fail again because CMD has said he'll have a referendum on foxy loxy. A lot more people than those who will vote CMD for the right to wear pink and go "Tally-Ho". And I strongly suspect that people will not vote CMD solely because they want freedom of choice, because they know that the EU, for example, is a lost cause there. And they won't vote for Lord Wotsit of Thing either because they don't know who he is and they don't know whether he likes foxes. They will suspect that he does like hunting because he's a Lord.

But I know that the statists up there actually don't care either way about foxy loxy. They don't. And they think, because they're told to think by "advisors" who are being paid for by us, that if they say a certain thing then people will vote for them. That's all they care about.

I think the advisors are wrong. I know they are. This is why:

I don't think like you do. I might think some things like you do, I might like some things like you do. There will be things that I like that you don't, and vice versa.

That's why economics is bollocks. It relies on people doing what a very few people assume they will do.

And that's why we're in such a pile of financial shit. I don't think the next lot, whoever they are, will do better, because they believe in Keynesian macroeconomics or some such bollocks. And it doesn't work. It never will.

I wish I had a solution, but I don't. Nobody does. They will try this way, that way, the other way. When it looks good, and it often does, they will say "Yay! We have solved the problem." The problem always solves itself though, people do what people do. And then people get greedy, and it goes to ratshit again, and out they go, and in come the next lot, and it goes on. And on.

And so do I.

It is the weekend.

2 comments:

CrisisMaven said...

Economics is, despite Wikipedia, NOT a social science. It is an axiomatic science like geometry. You don't measure triangles to find out if Pythagoras was right. And he WASN'T - measure ANY triangle and you'll find NONE has exactly 180 degrees! "Mathematical" economics suffers from the same error that you need to try out statistically if people buy less when the price goes up. And, alas there ARE cases, like with luxury goods, every now and then, where (certain!) people buy more when dearer ... That's, btw, why I started an economics blog.

Anonymous said...

Another reason economics is bollocks, is that the predictions of economists themselves affect the economy thus forcing economists to rethink their theory ad infinitum.

Since classical economics the subject has really been an elaborate trojan horse for socialism.