Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

The voodoo science of stimulus

Most social “science”, and macroeconomic modeling in particular, suffers from serious epistemological and methodological problems.  In a recent article for Reason Peter Suderman discusses the questionable models that are used to evaluate the effects of the stimulus:

According to the CBO’s estimates, depending on how the money is spent, one dollar of government spending can produce [...]

John Mackey on the Fed and bailouts

The Wall Street Journal features an interesting interview with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey:
there’s one other institution John Mackey thinks needs a makeover—and that’s government. He describes what the Federal Reserve has done with massive money creation as “debauchery of the currency.” He thinks the bailouts were a travesty. ..”I don’t think anybody’s too big [...]

Theodore Dalrymple on the culture of inflation

In the Summer 2009 issue of City Journal Theodore Dalrymple  discusses the cultural effects of inflation:

asset inflation—ultimately, the debasement of the currency—as the principal source of wealth corrodes the character of people. It not only undermines the traditional bourgeois virtues but makes them ridiculous and even reverses them. Prudence becomes imprudence, thrift becomes improvidence, sobriety [...]

Ages of laborious research

Terence W. Hutchison’s Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory (1938) quotes John Elliott Cairnes on the methodology of economics as saying, “The economist starts with a knowledge of ultimate causes. He is already, at the outset of his enterprise, in the position the physicist only attains after ages of laborious research…”.
Hutchison responds to his [...]

Carl Menger and the exact science of economics

In Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory (1938) Terence W. Hutchison presents a logical-empiricist perspective on economic methodology and takes specific issue with Austrian economists who believe that economic theories cannot and should not be falsified through empirical testing. In the chapter “The Application of Pure Theory” Hutchison criticizes Carl Menger’s view of what [...]

Prophets of doom and recovery

Guy Sorman on Joseph Stiglitz:

As Marx was in his day, Stiglitz has become a prophet of doom: the economic system will inevitably fail. There is no easier job in politics than being a prophet of doom: you just wait for the next downturn and claim that you predicted it. Doomsaying is not a scientific position, [...]

A false choice on the Fed and inflation

Economists publicly press the point that an independent Fed has a better track record in controlling inflation than a politicized Fed but Robert Higgs draws attention to

the undeniable fact that for more than a century before the Fed’s establishment, the purchasing power of the dollar fluctuated around an approximately horizontal trend line—that is, despite inflations [...]

Keynes and the efficient market hypothesis

Over at The Money Illusion, Scott Sumner has posted a number of blog entries about John Maynard Keynes as an investor and how it informs the debate about efficient markets:

Far from refuting the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), the story of Keynes’ investments actually supports the buy and hold recommendations of those who adhere to the [...]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on stimulus and monetary policy

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose writings display a unique combination of common sense and sophisticated epistemological awareness, has co-authored an opinion piece with Mark Spitznagel on the dangers of our culture of debt and misplaced trust in the economic experts of the government and the Fed. One does not need to completely agree with the authors [...]

Animal spirits in public policy

In the Summer 2009 issue of the Independent Review, Arnold Kling reviews George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller’s new book Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. Reading his review, one wonders how it is still possible for a serious scholar to make a case for [...]

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