• miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    38·
    2 months ago

    Liberal economics is not a science but based on bad philosophy and assumptions about human psychology, dreamt up by “economists” with no background in psychology nor based on any empirical research, which have never been demonstrated in practice. Not only aren’t they demonstrated, but they build mathematical models on top of these assumptions, but if the assumptions are meaningless, all the models are meaningless.

    If you point this out, they will tell you, “sure, these assumptions aren’t literally true, but they’re just approximate.” But in any rigorous science, if you approximate something, you’re expected to calculate your error bars, so you can have an idea of just how approximate it is. If you don’t, then for all you know, the error bars can be so big it has no relation to the real world. No liberal economist can tell you any way to actually determine how inaccurate their assumptions are, so you end up with a lot of maths, but none of it points back to anything real.

    Conveniently, though, their maths just so happen to always work out to prove the conclusions they started with: free markets are inherently good, state controls are inherently bad. They have never updated their theories after witnessing their complete failure in eastern Europe, they in fact try to rewrite history to pretend like it was state controls that destroyed Russia’s economy and free market anarchy that saved China’s, which, as this video shows, the most basic overview of the facts shows to be the exact opposite of what happened.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      Lib “economists” are a few steps below astrology. “If I plot my ideology on a chart and put some numbers on it that means I’m objectively correct!”

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Libertaryans of the Austrian School of economics flat-out reject empiricism. I don’t mean they go in a roundabout way of rejecting it. I mean Murray Rothbard actually wrote the following (emphasis mine):

      Most writers on the 1929 depression make the same grave mistake that plagues economic studies in general — the use of historical statistics to “test” the validity of economic theory. We have tried to indicate that this is a radically defective methodology for economic science, and that theory can only be confirmed or refuted on prior grounds. Empirical fact enters into the theory, but only at the level of basic axioms and without relation to the common historical-statistical “facts” used by present-day economists.

      Suffice it to say here that statistics can prove nothing because they reflect the operation of numerous causal forces. To “refute” the Austrian theory of the inception of the boom because interest rates might not have been lowered in a certain instance, for example, is beside the mark. It simply means that other forces — perhaps an increase in risk, perhaps expectation of rising prices — were strong enough to raise interest rates. But the Austrian analysis, of the business cycle continues to operate regardless of the effects of other forces. For the important thing is that interest rates are lower than they would have been without the credit expansion.

      From theoretical analysis we know that this is the effect of every credit expansion by the banks; but statistically we are helpless — we cannot use statistics to estimate what the interest rate would have been. Statistics can only record past events; they cannot describe possible but unrealized events.

      –excerpt from America’s Great Depression

      They claim some things are “simply self-evident” and can’t be proven, but are obviously true. Then they build “proofs” based on these assumptions through what they consider pure logic. Fuck me I guess if invisible hands and unpredicted outcomes aren’t accounted for. “The system is simply too complex.”