Talk:Economics/Archive 5

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Question on Methodological individualists

"Economists are sometimes referred to as Methodological Individualists."

Hmmm... It sounds like you're saying that the two terms are synonyms, which is certainly not the case. Are you saying that all economists are MIs? Or that some people say that all economists are MIs? From the 5 minutes of Googling on the subject, I don't see why economists should necessarily be MIs. Axlrosen 23:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't make sense. Striking: Economists are sometimes referred to as Methodological Individualists. from the page. The link to Homo economicus fills the role that I think they are trying to get much better. Jrincayc 03:36, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's good that Homo economicus exists, because one can posit Homo ethicus, Homo ecologicus and other basic motives for what humans do.

Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130

"Balanced article"

The article as it stands in December 2003 is now balanced by "framing economics", an introduction that lays out the reasons why economic models do not fully explain human behavior (failing to deal with ethics, ecology and energy economics, how labour and welfare are actually produced, etc.) This could be abbreviated and some of it moved as criticism to Homo economicus. However, these qualifying statements need to be made, and stronger qualifying statements can be found at http://natcap.org - somewhere in there you can find a list of "the 15 bad assumptions made by economics itself."

The question of political economy as questioning the assumptions versus economics as putting them into models is also dealt with in that section.

Unfortunately, after the "framing economics" section, the "economics is real" view kind of takes over. It's telling that there is no article on Socialist economics or even labour economics, welfare economics. There's some on feminist economics and some on Marxist economics at Marxism, but, all told, these subjects are not taken seriously enough.

It would be good to see them treated as carefully as energy economics, green economics and human development theory are. Even if most of what is in these older theories (ecological economics, feminist economics, labour economics, welfare economics, and Karl himself) is now subsumed into the more recent theories, they remain of historical interest. David Ricardo is broadly considered the founder of labour economics... and very recent figures like Amartya Sen associate themselves with welfare economics. So you cannot have good coverage of economics without at least explaining what these theories are and how they settled the social/economic and ethical/economic questions.

Law and economics should also be mentioned as a way to apply economic models to law. It may be that these methods do not describe choice in the real world at all, but only in artifical/industrial/legal worlds created by humanity.

Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130

These parts of the article remain in the minds of those who, while prepared to comment that they are missing, are unprepared to add them to the article. You could do us all a favour by adding them yourself. Cheers -- Derek Ross dated December 11, 2003.
Actually, I believe this anonymous IP is banned user EofT. If so, he could do us all a favour by trying to getting Jimbo's permission to edit, instead of trying to poke holes in our soft security. It's soft, but it ain't weak. -- Cyan 20:36, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What you believe is what you believe, for your own reasons and in advance of your own agenda, which apparently includes censoring economic material that is of grave interest to everyone dying for poor economic organization on this planet at present.
There will be no begging for "permission", certainly not for conveying essential information like this. The GFDL terms are not being followed, so, there is no obligation to "respect" any "rules" made by sysops. There is also no "trying", what matters is mostly getting through, and will continue to get through. Using 142.*.*.* IPs bald-faced like this is mostly to wake up people like you to the kind of garbage (liars, libellers, spin doctors) you have allied yourself with - look into the actual origins of this idiocy, what was actually said to User:RK and User:Maveric149, and you will realize you are on the wrong side, Cyan, and that User:Netesq, User:Cunctator, etc., are right to call for vast and deep changes to this "mailing list" system.

Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45

Controversy over Economics

Removed:

There is very great controversy about how supply and demand questions, ethics questions, and ecology interact to restrict and frame economic questions. These questions are usually dealt with in the field called political economy.
The article on economic choice deals with what constitutes an economic, rather than a moral, political, or personal type of choice.

I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Cyan has moved/censored the article to User:Cyan/kidnapped/economic_choice and you should review what is said there. Incorporate as desired. Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45
I'd like to stress that there is substational information about alternative and in many cases obscure approaches to economics on Wikipedia. In fact, the alternatives are overall given more attention than mainstream economics in a variety of articles. The problem with the article on economics has always been that it has tended to be dominated by people who dislike the subject. I'm fine with criticism of economics, but the subject should first be given a clean, uninterrupted presentation, just like all the alternatives (green economics, natural capitalism and what have you). -- User:Galizia dated December 14, 2003
This is just not true. If anything the material overall is still balanced towards the so-called "mainstream" neoclassical view, which is by no means accepted in most forums outside the US. If what you say were true, there would be articles on the vast fields of labour economics and welfare economics which have been leading even to Swedish Bank Prizes lately (Amartya Sen the most obvious example). There'd be attention paid to labour theory of value and labor theory of value being about the same thing, and, there'd be discussion of David Ricardo as having founded that theory, not just a firm politicized dismissal.
It is not just dislike that drives most criticism, it's a basic belief that economics is false - there is no such thing as a commodity and no such thing as a product and no such thing as supply and no such thing as demand - that the quantifications applied in the contracts on commodity markets etc., are simply based on nothing, utterly ungrounded in anything but the authority that writes and enforces them. There have been street protests by economics students in Europe on this grounds.
There are no more "alternatives", if you look at the discourse taking place at the UN and even at the World Bank, it is a question of deciding which of the ecology-driven approaches is the "mainstream"... the term natural capital for instance is now in wide use at both institutions. No one believes, for instance, that GDP has any valid economic basis whatsoever. There is NO argument for that - its creators argue that it is not relevant for the purposes politicians and bankers use it for.

Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45

Marxism Description

Marxist economists, who were more influential a few decades ago, often feel that each era of history obeys its very own set of laws, and that contemporary economics can only be applied to industrialized societies.

was replaced with:

Marxist economic theory asserts that each historical era has a unique "dialectical" tension, and that economic formulations can only be applied to societies which have the same "objective" means of production.

The first actually makes sense to me. Is there any advantage to the second? It looks like it might be more precise, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Jrincayc 14:24, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The new description is harder to understand. It requires that the reader know what dialectic and objective mean as used by Marx/Hegel. It also illiminates the comment about the declining influence of Marxist economics since the fall of communist USSR. mydogategodshat 00:44, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Reverted back to original wording. I would probably would like the change better if it included a link on objective and dialectical to the definition that Marx/Hegel have. Jrincayc 02:15, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The original wording is both weaker and less precise. First Marxists don't "feel", their theory states clearly. Second, the original wording does not say why Marxist economics says as it does. Yes the terms are used in the particular marxist sense, which is why their are quotes aroud them.

Stirling Newberry

Can you write it in such a way that the reader can understand it without knowledge of specialized Marxist/Hegelian terminology? mydogategodshat 02:15, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No more than one can explain Smith without explaining supply and demand in context. Some words are primary. For marx, dialectical struggle over the means of production is, almost, as close to an axiom as one will get. Perhaps you could find someone more sympathetic to marxism than I am to find a simple way of explaining the theory. Absent this we should, at least, let Marx speak for himself.

This quote from the Marxism page says very much the same thing as my earlier revision:

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. "

All I've done is paraphrase this rather famous 'graf.

Stirling Newberry 03:22, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)