Outside of all of that, both previous rebukes to my comment fail to address the main point, the majority of people are not better off even given massive economic growth of recent decades.
> The ultimate veto power of the third option is evident all around us.
...
> The main difference between theory and reality, is that in theory they're the same, but in reality they're not.
> This applies doubly to economic theory...
Economic theory is based on assumptions of human behaviour. This makes it fundamentally a study in sociology.
So while there are some brilliant mathematical mechanisms used, relying on those numbers to mean something in the real world that humans inhabit is a stretch, and has very often had a hard time when comparing it's own predictions to the historical record.
Hayek argued that the best health care outcomes would come from private investment, and Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks. Both of these are in stark contrast to the reality on the ground in the world today.
Well, ok - I’ll grant that you can find simplistic narratives that overly rely on GDP to stand in for “overall goodness”. But my point is more that the field of economics is not doing that. Modern economics understands what GDP does and doesn’t tell you, and they have better tools at their disposal to unpack the deeper picture. It seems a little unfair to level that criticism at practitioners when it’s really politicians or non-economists “playing with dad’s gun”.
I'm sure you've heard of GDP, it's pretty much exactly what you say the market theories are not about...
When in fact, GDP is the most common metric used to illustrate economic health.
WRT theories of the "rational consumer", no memes are required, an entire field of modern economics is dedicated to debunking this assumption:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics
Outside of all of that, both previous rebukes to my comment fail to address the main point, the majority of people are not better off even given massive economic growth of recent decades.
> FacePlant bought InstaGram, Goggle bought youtube, M$ bought github and linkedin.
> The ultimate veto power of the third option is evident all around us.
...
> The main difference between theory and reality, is that in theory they're the same, but in reality they're not.
> This applies doubly to economic theory...
Economic theory is based on assumptions of human behaviour. This makes it fundamentally a study in sociology.
So while there are some brilliant mathematical mechanisms used, relying on those numbers to mean something in the real world that humans inhabit is a stretch, and has very often had a hard time when comparing it's own predictions to the historical record.
Hayek argued that the best health care outcomes would come from private investment, and Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks. Both of these are in stark contrast to the reality on the ground in the world today.