this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is far closer to theology than physics.
Asking an economist for advice is akin to asking a priest.
Yep!
Economics is a valid area of study, after all everyone loves money and needs some. Things work better for everyone when it is moving around optimally.
But money also buys opinions from feckless nerds. Thus the entire ‘science’ of economics as the public sees it is much more akin to a company paying a consultant to come in to deliver bad news about needed layoffs. It is pure theatre to deflect ire away from the real reasons.
Can confirm.
But DAMN, will they make the case that we're correct AF while hedging and saying "well, it depends..." half the time.
Depends on who you ask. There are economists who actually go through all the data and are the ones who can provide sources and examples and there are the ones who go “trust me bro the companies love and care about you and totally listen to your opinions bro please the free market will protect you and you totally have power pleeeeeeease bro”.
How is this any different to the various incarnations of priests? Economists interpret budgets as if they’re dregs of tea leaves, and unemployment statistics like the entrails of a sacrificial animal.
It doesn’t matter how rigorously someone analyses scripture, the end result can only ever intersect with reality by accident.
Yeah, scientists do that too, as a geologist, the hardest of hard sciences pun very much intended
We look at crystals like the dregs of tea leaves and isotope ratios like they're the entrails of a sacrificed animal.
As a common heard saying on mines, 3 geologists will have 4 opinions
The difference is that economics is a social science, masquerading as a hard science. Nothing wrong with the social sciences but they often present themselves as though the results they've found are akin to a hard science experiment with the lowest R values on record. In fact, ironically, most economists tend to look down their noses at the other social sciences and I think it's causing them a lot of dukkha.
Ironically, it's the social sciences that would help them realise that their discipline was already enough, as it was, all along.
The real problem came when neoclassical economics was rebranded as "just basic economics!" and not one of many conflicting, equally supported, schools of thought.
My study presented economics as a soft science, so I'm not sure where you're coming from.
Of course it's a social science, but even those use experiments and the scientific method, or do you also think sociology and psychology are bullshit?
STEM people are the ones always looking down on every other discipline, you're the case in point.
When did I say that any of them were bullshit? Can you not make up things i didn't say and then argue against that instead please?
I literally said that the subject was already good enough, as it was. How did you miss that?
This entire paragraph was really telling.
Okay, so, I'll try again, which bit is the part where I said the subject was bullshit? From the looks of it, it does seem as though you just made it up and argued against that, instead of what I said.
Interesting that you left out the part where I said it was always good enough all along thought. Then again, I guess that part does really shit all over the nonses you're spewing doesn't it?
At this point I'm concerned that you genuinely can't tell the difference between the words I used and "all economics is bullshit."
Those people are influencers, not economists.