June 7, 2017

Garbage economics

Comment on Barkley Rosser on ‘Trump Blows Up The Gulf Cooperation Council’

Blog-Reference

The last signal I received from Barkley Rosser was LOL which is the perfect analogy of a ship’s last signal SOS.

Barkley Rosser got everything wrong in his career as an economist but he was not alone in his bottomless scientific incompetence.#1 He never understood what profit is but had a fine grasp of folk psychology, folk sociology, and history as documented in his post ‘Some Saudi-US History’. In marked contrast to the majority of substandard economists, who never rise above the level of vacuous storytelling, he was always and everywhere strictly committed to facts: “Philby would convert to Islam and take several wives. He was also the father of later Soviet spy, Kim Philby.”

Except for gossip, Barkley Rosser knows nothing. As a fervent busybody, though, he has an opinion on everything. His achievements in the fields of attention- and reputation management qualifies him for a political economist.

However, the first fundamental fact of life to notice is that science and politics do not mix, never did, and never will. Hence, a decision has to be made: either-or. After all, according to the still upheld self-definition economics is a science.

If economics cannot satisfy the well-defined criteria of science ― material and formal consistency ― it faces the option of to either leave science voluntarily or being thrown out eventually. This is not a catastrophe, though, economics can live happily thereafter as part of the entertainment industry with grand debates about free markets, voluntary unemployment, housing bubbles, the absurd distribution of income/wealth, and taxation as the perennial torture by the Antichrist=State. All that has to be done is to renounce the title of science. Because to keep this title much longer would be misleading and even fraudulent.

Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are materially/formally inconsistent. In other words, they are scientifically indefensible. The problem is that all four approaches are tied to political groups/interests and are used as a means of persuasion/propaganda/ justification. The current versions of economics have no scientific value, merely some political utility.

When Krugman supports the Democrats, when Wren-Lewis and Keen support Labour/Corbyn, when Varoufakis fights for democratizing the Eurozone, and Barkley Rosser comments on KSA/UAE/Qatar has this anything to do with science? What have they and Hayek and Keynes and Friedman in common? NEITHER of these so-called economists has a scientifically valid theory about how the economy works. So, ALL political filibuster ― right-wing/left-wing does not matter ― is scientifically worthless.

Political economists have made economics a garbage science. Orthodox and heterodox economists have NO scientifically valid theory of how the monetary economy works. They do not even understand what profit is. In other words, economists have not done their science homework. What are the odds that these ignoramuses can ever make a sensible contribution to politics?

Economists have to entirely withdraw from politics and focus on how to perform the scientific U-turn called a Paradigm Shift. The new and extremely tight definition of the subject matter is: Economics is the science that studies how the monetary economy works. Garbage economics has to be left behind in the cesspool of failed/fake science.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Profit and the collective failure of economists.