The Social Atom blog has been pleasant because of the wide-eyed amazement of a very modern physicist with a solid rep in networking and complex systems happening upon the silly, overrated discipline that is economics. Especially that discipline's insistence that humans are rational. We've been hammering at them here for a longer while, but it's nice to hear someone smart say the same things. Here are some of the better excerpts of his most recent post:
But I'm still not convinced that anyone can really predict and manage an economy on the basis of anything more scientific than the reading of tea leaves. As far as I can tell, economics, especially the "macroeconomics" of entire economies, is still very far from being a real science. (I wonder if any readers out there -- perhaps, some economist -- can point me to any data showing that economists can predict the movements of economies with anything like the accuracy one routinely finds in the rest of science? I'd be very interested to see such evidence.) This post from the Leiter Reports, although three years old, gives an interesting (legal philosopher's) perspective on economics as a science, and it's one I find myself largely agreeing with. Economics has been so committed to rational behavior, to proving mathematical theorems (which makes it look scientific), and even worse, perhaps, to the notion that all systems can be understood by supposing they are in some equilibrium, that it's tied one or both arms behind its back in its efforts really to understand economic phenomena.
Remarkably, these theoretical addictions still persist. An economist told me that it's still very hard to publish in some of the "best" economics journals if one does not assume that economic agents are fully rational. This is a problem in the sociology of the economics discipline. But it's changing, of course, as it would have to if economics is going to grow into something more intellectually sound. One promising development, for example, is a great body of work in computational economics, in which researchers aim to make plausible assumptions about human behavior -- based hopefully on empirical evidence -- and then use computational models to explore outcomes in large systems of interacting agents.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
My Point Exactly
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Seventh Generation
One of my biggest problems with the religion masquerading as science known as "the free market" has always been the glib refusal to consider the future in whether prices are being reasonably set (which matches the discipline's [sic] failure to consider the past as well). In fact, the popular "discounting" you see in economic calculations was always just a poorly thought way to justify doing something now regardless of obvious impacts that action would have on future humans who weren't getting to vote. I've always thought the old Native American philosophy of considering the Seventh Generation when making decisions was one of the most intelligent things I've ever heard, a laxative for all the self-absorption and destruction brought on after baptism with the water of "free market." This post over at Grist explains why we should have been thinking about and still should think about that Seventh Generation, assuming we end up being able to get to a Seventh.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Living the Frugal Life
If you’re looking to live smart and thrifty check out Frugal For Life. This blog has some excellent ideas on how you can save a buck on pretty much everything. Additionally, there are tons of links to like-minded sites. I’ve definitely gotten a few great ideas reading this blog that I’m going to implement into my financial regiment. Enjoy!
Friday, April 27, 2007
Covering my Assets
Just the other week, the IRS financially devastated me. It’s somewhat my own fault since I miscalculated my estimated taxes as a self-employed individual. But that’s beside the point. With this “fresh start” of sorts, I’ve really begun taking a close look at my financial situation. And it’s not that pretty. I’ve found a number of useful sites, blogs, articles, tips, etc that I’ll be passing on over the next few weeks.
Check out my first plan of attack after the jump.
While my coffers have been virtually eliminated, sadly my debt hasn’t. Right now I have 5 cards that all have at least a $1000 balance on each one. Not one card has a minimum payment of over $100. But I pay $100/month on each card. Now this is making a dent in each one, but not by much. So here’s my new plan of attack.
1. I’m paying $500/month total. So I ranked my cards from lowest to highest balance. Now for the four cards with the highest balances, I’m only paying the minimum payment.
2. That all said and done, I’m left with $300-something. I take this amount and apply it to the card with the lowest balance – making a nice dent in the balance.
3. I’m going to keep doing this until that card is paid off. That should take about four months. When that card is paid off, I keep paying $500/month, sticking to the same system, but applying it to the remaining four cards.
4. Do this so on and so forth till the cards are paid off. The system takes a little time, but I think it’s more effective than little payments over a much longer time.
I wish I could remember where I say this strategy so I could pass on the link, but it skips my mind right now. If I can find it, I’ll definitely pass it on. That’s all I’ve got on finances right now. More to come for sure.
(Photo: Pandarine)
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The World Is a Better Place Tonight
Monday, November 06, 2006
But Economists Say . . . .
One of the reasons I'm so critical of economists is their devotion to dogma in the face of contrary evidence. Evitably when someone proposes an increase in the minimum wage, rather than recognize that putting more money into more people's hands would increase economy activity through the multiplier effect, some economist will be quoted saying that the increase will end up hurting the beneficiary because employers will have to fire people to pay it. The fact that that outcome has never accompanied minimum wage increases in the past never seems to faze them. Well, good on Governing for this post on the impact of OR's 2oo2 indexing of its state's minimum wage which, omigod, ended up coinciding with an 8% increase in private, nonfarm payrolls, increased wages overall, job growth in min wage industries, and a drop of 2.2% in the state's unemployment rate.
Next week we'll review how stagflation is impossible.