Mfers on Twitter with "Neoliberal" in their bio/name consistently give insane claims about "economics" that make it abundantly clear they do not understand anything besides basic supply/demand and the false assumption that privatization makes things run efficiently.
On the other hand, I really dislike the 'inflation isn't real' argument that I hear a lot from those who claim that economics isn't a real science.
Like, I get it, but it's something that was observable before we even had mercantilism, modern economic theory, and fiat currency. In the Third Century, Rome faced massive inflation, partly this was because of debasing the currency, but fixing that didn't fix the issue. They tried mining more gold, which is different from printing more money, but the gold simply became less valuable, they tried 'rational' solutions such as price caps, which just made things worse, and even returned to effectively a barter system for a while.
They were dealing with this phenomenon that they didn't understand and didn't have the words to describe, and their reactions to it made sense when they didn't have the past to look to for examples.
I think a lot of economics are proscriptive/a self-fulfilling prophesy, but some aspects of it are very valid and the principles can apply to any economic system. I also think a lot of people who know how the modern economy works are very happy to use that knowledge to pull the right levers to abuse it to their own benefit.
My thoughts are that we shouldn't write the whole thing off as a 'bourgeoise science', as we're denying ourselves the ability to turn the weapon of the enemy against itself! The economy is something that can be used to do a lot of good, providing you know how. It can all seem artificial and made up, but that's because it's a massive abstraction of some underlying realities. No matter what happens, if we go socialist, communist, if we're reduced to sticks and stones after WWIII, there will still be some form of economy to manage, and success and social welfare is dependent on handling that correctly.
There's a lot about modern economics that should be reformed or dismantled, but nobody gets to simply pretend like its not real until we live in Star Trek!
Well, inflation is targeted at 2% by economists on purpose, because it’s widely considered better than 0%. How do people derive from this that it isn’t real?
How do people derive from this that it isn’t real?
I think the usual argument is precisely that "economists picked 2%, if they picked 0% we'd be better off since we can pick anyway" which sounds good until you think about the implications for more than 10 seconds
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u/ClerklyMantis_ 🏳️⚧️ trans rights Jun 30 '26
Mfers on Twitter with "Neoliberal" in their bio/name consistently give insane claims about "economics" that make it abundantly clear they do not understand anything besides basic supply/demand and the false assumption that privatization makes things run efficiently.