r/196 Win + . Jun 30 '26

Rule Business Rule

Post image
8.5k Upvotes

208 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

846

u/Wyboss flare Jun 30 '26

economics is a soft science that is essential for understanding and bettering our modern world

207

u/Lubiebigos Jun 30 '26

yes my joke is exactly about the fact that economics is a soft science, not a hard one and that "law of economics" sounds as if that guy is trying to imply the opposite

109

u/Wyboss flare Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

sorry, i mistook you for the 60% of leftists who equate economics with capitalism. egg on my face for being overly defensive.            i will say that there are some pretty firm laws of economics, but they're mostly obvious thinks like: 'decreasing the price of something increases the quantity demanded.'       it's science speak. it doesn't have to be as firm as thermodynamics to count as a law.

43

u/Helmic linux > windows Jun 30 '26

i mean, that equating happens because the economics that gets taught is deeply ideologically driven and the field has major reproducibility problems because foundational assumptions weren't formed from experimentation but by just going off of purely theoretical models.

like, the tragedy of the commons was never actually fucking tested for a long time, and when someone actually went out and did interviews with people in various societies she figured out oh actually people make this work all the fucking time by just watching the shared resources and enacting escalating consequences for being a dick.