sadmanbarty
Well-known member
I think that's more the case of politicians and the media empowering a certain minority set of economists, rather than reflecting the economic consensus.
UK EU Referendum Aftermath
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I think that's more the case of politicians and the media empowering a certain minority set of economists, rather than reflecting the economic consensus.
luka
Well-known member
hucks
Your Message Here
Didn't know facebook had a search function that identifies literally the worst people in the country. Where's the button that does that?
luka
Well-known member
Gnomic. Are all economic questions moral questions in disguise? Is everything else mere accounting? Perhaps you should flesh this out a bit for us so we don't have to do so much guesswork.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Come on, you know that's not vim's style. He sits eternally motionless in a full lotus position, plugged Matrix-style into a terminal from which he receives an uninterrupted stream of data from Bloomberg, Standard and Poor's and a selection of top global stock exchanges, occasionally spitting out these cryptic little jewels of Buddhistic wisdom for us, the uninitiated, to scrabble for in the dirt.
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vimothy
yurp
Suppose you wanted to know the answer to the question, what's the right level of public debt in society. An economist might build a model where welfare was a function of public debt. Then the correct level would be whatever maximises social welfare, or minimises some equivalent loss function. So the correct level of public debt is a "technical" question and not a political one. It has a right answer, which can be derived mathematically and has a similar status to a naturalistic fact.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
If I can hazard a guess, I think what vim is saying (please correct me if wrong) is that you can model all these parameters scientifically (sort of - let's not pretend we're talking about physics here) that will give you a "right" answer to something like the question of public debt. But that figure is based on the maximization of something considered "good" or the minimization of something considered "bad", and those things are arbitrary choices which have a moral element and are highly subjective. So a Marxist might seek an economic model that minimizes inequality of income, whereas a libertarian might seek one that ensures the smallest possible dependence on government expenditure for the greatest possible number of people.
Something like that?
Something like that?
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
In response to Vim’s point.
There are moral arguments to be had about how to respond to climate change (loosing jobs in the fossil fuel industry for example), but that doesn’t mean that scientists shouldn’t be believed about man-made climate change.
Likewise, there are arguments to be had about retaining Britain’s sovereignty and democracy, but Leaver’s were denying that leaving was going to have significant negative effects on the economy.
Polling suggests that Leave voters weren’t willing to lose single pound of annual income to stem immigration, yet many voted Leave for precisely that reason. This suggests that it wasn’t a moral difference that won the vote, but people not believing (or not even being privy to) the economic consensus.
ps. Mr. Tea, talking about Marxists and libertarians in a conversation about economic consensus is like talking about homeopathy and witchdoctors in a conversation about the medical profession.
There are moral arguments to be had about how to respond to climate change (loosing jobs in the fossil fuel industry for example), but that doesn’t mean that scientists shouldn’t be believed about man-made climate change.
Likewise, there are arguments to be had about retaining Britain’s sovereignty and democracy, but Leaver’s were denying that leaving was going to have significant negative effects on the economy.
Polling suggests that Leave voters weren’t willing to lose single pound of annual income to stem immigration, yet many voted Leave for precisely that reason. This suggests that it wasn’t a moral difference that won the vote, but people not believing (or not even being privy to) the economic consensus.
ps. Mr. Tea, talking about Marxists and libertarians in a conversation about economic consensus is like talking about homeopathy and witchdoctors in a conversation about the medical profession.