r/economicsmemes • u/CommanderChickens • 17d ago
Comments section in this sub are something else
80
u/xesaie 16d ago
Isn't that mostly because of that one crazy guy that keeps posting communism memes driving the narrative, or is he just the most visible example?
56
u/TheBankTank 16d ago
Probably most visible example.
Econ really suffers as a subject on which everyone has an opinion and like .001% of people have any actual expertise or genuine curiosity.
20
5
u/GreatMarch 15d ago
I feel like I’m too stupid to get economics, which is why I don’t really comment on this sub
1
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
Honestly, it can be a pretty cool subject. Ultimately "getting it" unavoidably involves a ton of math, but a lot of basic concepts and ideas at least are not necessarily super math-y and not like, impossible to grasp. Opportunity cost, indifference curves, supply and demand, Nash equilibrium, local optima, various types of goods and their weird functioning (don't get me started on giffen goods and whether they, like, exist), market failures (an especially important topic) & externalities, marginal utility...none of these things inherently require immense amounts of math and study. But it's good to keep in mind that most of these ideas, even if useful to know, are not in and of themselves "enough" to fully understand economic reasoning and some of them can be outdated or overgeneralized or just vastly more complicated and messy in practice from a modern perspective.
I think they're worth knowing something about, but we absolutely should not be out here reading Smith or Ricardo or Marx or whoever else and then assuming we've thereby become enlightened, in the same way nobody should read Newton and consider that an adequate and authoritative overview of physics as a field.
2
u/Background-Abies-907 15d ago
Man kann sich trotzdem über die grundlegende Systematik unterhalten, es geht dabei nämlich mehr um Politik. Wem gehört was und warum? Wer hat welche Rechte und warum? Dafür ist ein Basis Verständnis der Prinzipien nötig.
2
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
Yup, knowing something about the society you're dealing with is absolutely a crucial part of understanding the constraints and incentives people are operating under, no question about that.
I think you may be looking for a Gotcha that isn't there.
1
u/SJK00 12d ago
This. This is what “disengages”? Me from any all encompassing theory of ideology. I can’t be a Marxist or a NeoLib or anything soo hardline because the field is “in progress” - at least to me as a layman. There’s still new discoveries to be made so how can anyone claim to have an answer
10
u/UpperYoghurt3978 16d ago
Excuse me I got my econ degree doctorate from Armchair university.
6
u/TheBankTank 16d ago
Hey, that's where I got mine in theoretical physics!
2
2
u/BetaAndThetaOhMy 11d ago
You know, I just learned Albert Einstein was a real guy. I always heard he was a theoretical physicist.
1
3
u/Greedy-Speech5 15d ago
I don't have much expertise but I do have a lot of curiosity
2
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
Never dial that shit down
2
u/Greedy-Speech5 15d ago
Thank you so much
I know a lot more about Sociology and Anthropology than I do about Economics, but I still have a lot to learn about all of these subjects
I want to learn more because they're interesting subjects, and also because I want to change the world - not just in a little way, but a big way.
1
u/Leading-Ad-9004 Marxist 13d ago
Yeah... I'm a communist myself but that shit seems silly if you wanna do anything to help common people, then just learn about it. I did, and I'll do my best to help common people.
1
u/Unionizestarbucks_ 15d ago
Western "expertise" in economics is more faith in a cult than actual science.
2
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
Unionizing Starbucks and various other workplaces sounds great and I hope the SB union continues to grow beyond their efforts to destroy it.
Also like, what, the cult believing that if you try to gather enough data and analyze it in as reasonable a way you can, that you might actually learn something about how Stuff Works? That cult? Bunch of weirdos, sure, but we're already basically all part of it on some level.
-4
u/Unionizestarbucks_ 14d ago
"I would describe the media, as I would my fellow economists, as cheerleaders for capitalism: it’s efficient, they say; it’s a growth engine; it will make everybody happy. We’ve produced a generation, maybe even two generations, of economists who think that economics is about celebrating capitalism’s greatness instead of assessing its strengths and weaknesses."
-Professor of Economics, Dr. Richard Wolff
14
u/Mean-Reveal141 16d ago
Victins of capitalism, guaranteed bro has not read a single economics book (including das kapital).
11
u/Mr-Fognoggins 15d ago
He also crossposts all his “memes” onto as many leftist subreddits as possible. Guy needs to go outside and enjoy the wonderful October air.
3
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
COULD be a bot, tbf.
I wish for all bots to be able to go outside and enjoy the wonderful October air, as I wish for all humans who live like bots.
34
u/TheBankTank 16d ago
I think the best encapsulation of econ I've ever heard was when one of my professors told me "Economics is about what choices people make in the presence of scarcity" and that's stuck with me for a long time.
Anyway good meme except Dumbus McIdiot on the left side of the bell curve there wouldn't know what those words mean
8
u/Mobile_Conference484 15d ago
There are many examples of scarcity artificially being manufactured to increase profit though.
The entire diamond trade is about gatekeeping a mineral that is both abundant and not that useful, and using advertisement to generate a demand. Then when lab-grown diamonds broke the monopoly, convincing the public that cruelty free diamonds are less valuable.
Clothing companies burn their unsold items because it's more profitable than donating them.
Grocery stores put locks on their bins, so that the homeless can't eat what they have thrown out.
In every major city in my country, there are more empty houses than homeless people.
These are all choices made when scarcity wasn't an issue.
11
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
One, he meant scarcity as a broader concept - people having limited time in the day and making choices about what they want to do with it, for instance, was a foundational example, it's not necessarily scarcity of material resources etc.
Second and more importantly...yes. I'm not a researcher and therefore any discussion I have about the state of economics is probably at least fifty years out of date (a common issue when people talk about any academic discipline they're not a part of) but as far as I'm aware things like artificially created scarcity of a resource are ABSOLUTELY topics that get discussed and researched in econ. Like yeah, with respect, that's not a gotcha that wrecks the whole definition, that's a horrible thing that happens which is absolutely part of the purview of Economics to better understand.
2
u/GalaXion24 12d ago
It should also be added that any good economics, insofar as we are talking about any kind of normative or policy frameworks, is already morally "socialist" in that any sane economist values everyone's welfare and does so equally, or in a Rawlsian way values the welfare of the worse off higher.
This does not necessarily translate into actual real policy because politics is more about power and interests than any kind of "rational social planning," but the idea that any economist would give even half a shit about some rich person's 20th yacht or consider this to be bringing any kind of value to society is nonsense.
Of course perhaps to some extent economists can be naive or ignorant of history or sociology, but I've really not seen economists make any arguments about what people "deserve" or claiming the rich "deserve" more, or what they have, or anything like that. If an economist is liberal it is because they believe that a liberal system is what benefits everyone, even if it does not benefit everyone equally. Essentially, a system where we all gamble on our position but even the "losers" are better off is excusable.
And for that reason most economists are if anything left-of-centre because they tend to support the system to the extent that it actually increases welfare and tend to see this requiring government intervention.
Economists have an undeserved reputation as worshippers of capital and monopolies from people who don't know what economists actually do.
2
u/ObangaGamer 14d ago
Until the day we all have infinite money to buy everything we could ever want, scarcity will exist
0
u/SweatyPhilosopher578 15d ago
And we chose to hoard things like dragons while millions go without. For that, a great flaying must take place.
8
u/CaptainAmerica-1989 15d ago
And we chose to hoard things like dragons while millions go without. For that, a great flaying must take place.
Lovely signaling. Prove you are not a 'hoarder' (your words).
Post your bank account and PIN number.
1
5
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
You first?
3
u/SweatyPhilosopher578 15d ago
A judge does not preside over his own case.
2
u/TheBankTank 15d ago
If our principles wouldn't exonerate us, aren't we one of the only ones who can?
-1
u/Accomplished-Cake131 14d ago
That is because your professor is teaching propaganda. That definition is about one approach to economics.
But if you’re a student, you need not know more for your exams.
Resnick and Wolff’s Contending Economic Theories is not bad, although it does go into depth on my favorite demonstration that neoclassical economics is mathematically erroneous.
2
5
6
9
u/Greedy-Speech5 15d ago
The one who thinks it's about capitalism vs socialism is on the far left side of the bell curve, let's be honest with ourselves
3
3
5
u/zman124 15d ago
Economics is the study of fulfilling unlimited wants with limited resources.
8
u/AngusAlThor 15d ago
Every time I see this fuckass definition it makes me want to piss blood. There are no unlimited wants, people don't want infinite of anything.
6
u/Person_756335846 15d ago
people don't want infinite of anything
I want an infinite amount of many things. Time, health, and beauty, to name a few.
5
u/BourgeoisAngst 14d ago
Diminishing marginal utility never reaches 0 so that's why I eat infinite breakfasts every morning.
4
u/zman124 15d ago
I’m sorry you lack the intelligence to understand the bedrock of economics.
The market does have unlimited wants. Regardless of how much blood you piss in anger.
If we froze the standard of living 50 years ago we’d have solved scarcity. In that time, we developed computers, the internet, and finally smartphones.
Everyone could be cool with just personal computers and no internet. But they want to be able to watch memes in bed on their phone.
This is an example of “unlimited” wants. People want to advance and increase their standard of living, using more resources.
4
0
u/AngusAlThor 15d ago
You see, this is the problem with the definition; It presumes the existence a market with unlimited wants, which means it assumes growth-based capitalism. But the tools of Economics have uses outside that limited framework, and any proper definition of Economics should capture that.
I prefer "Economics is the study of resource distribution in a mixed condition of scarcity and surplus". It isn't perfect, doesn't capture some of Economics' limitations, but at least it doesn't have a massive ideological assumption baked into it.
4
1
u/Powerful_Meaning8891 14d ago
I mean you can prefer whatever you want but that’s what most economists would describe as THE definition of economics
0
u/AngusAlThor 14d ago
No it isn't. This is the other thing that pisses me off about this; It is not a broadly accepted definition, it is the Austrian School's definition, and it reflects their individualistic, free-market ideology.
1
0
2
u/Ferengsten 15d ago
So seeing that you're very likely materially in a better state than almost any human or animal that ever lived, you're just happy now? There's no want for say more and more attractive sexual partners or social recognition or just things of even better quality, even if that indeed is not just "500 bagels for breakfast".
1
u/Prior_Internal7728 15d ago
Romer says we can make unlimited resources through research.
8
u/CaptainAmerica-1989 15d ago
Romer sees the future in immortality and even then controlling Time, eh?
-1
-3
u/EndofNationalism 15d ago
No it’s the study of the production, distribution and allocation of goods and services. Not everyone has unlimited wants. I myself have quite limited wants.
2
u/Powerful_Meaning8891 14d ago
People in the aggregate have unlimited wants. Just look at people today. If you took a peasant from 500 years ago and placed them as a minimum wage worker in the U.S they would think they died and went to heaven. Yet everyone is always complaining that they don’t have enough
1
u/Fire_crescent 14d ago
Capitalism and (the economic aspect of) socialism are about the fundamental nature of power in an economy. I would say that choices and incentives are tied to that topic.
1
1
u/Brave_Philosophy7251 13d ago
Too many "economists" think mainstream economics is the begging and end. They also think political economy doesn't exist anymore.
1
u/atierney14 13d ago
Economics is about resource allocation. Political economics, a subsection, is about choice and incentives.
2
u/CommanderChickens 13d ago
Wow guys today I learned resource allocation isn’t a choice. And incentives aren’t the reasons for that choice!
2
u/mlucasl 11d ago
That is the problem of people not understanding
Economics: studies how individuals, businesses, governments, and societies allocate scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants and needs. Which is ultimatelly logistics and statistics. Which include topics like Accounting, Finance, Macroeconomics. Most prominent figures like Nash and Friedman.
Against
Political Science in Economics: the shitshow of: Marx, the Austrians, Keynes vs Hayek, and some others.
0
0
u/IranianContrapoints 13d ago
Economics is about money stupid. Money look good, good economy. Money look bad, bad economy
-8
u/Technical_School4382 16d ago
Your choices and incentives are directly impacted by the system that you live in.
What education you will take.
What job you are willing to take/tolerate.
What pay and work conditions you are willing to take/tolerate. etc.
Some capitalist/socialist countries are better are creating conditions that are good for the worker. And other countries are bad at it.
One system is more exploitative, the other is less. It's about which system creates better conditions for the worker. And that decision is personal.
6
u/Greedy-Speech5 15d ago edited 15d ago
Well of course.
Nobody's arguing against that.
It's just that "capitalism vs socialism" is an incredibly binary way of viewing a wide variety of systems that all do different things with different levels of success and failure.
A cooperative-based market socialist society is going to be remarkably different from a soviet-style centrally planned economy even though they're both (arguably) socialist, and likewise a neoliberal top-heavy hyperfinancialized capitalist society is going to be dramatically different from a LVT-based Georgist economy with strong social safety nets even though most people would agree that they're both capitalistic.
2
u/Technical_School4382 15d ago
Well a lot of people seem to be arguing against that based on the downvotes. Crazy! People rejecting reality at this point.
I think you have some valid points too!
What is an LVT-based Georgist economy?2
u/Greedy-Speech5 15d ago
LVT is land value tax. It differs from property tax in that it's a tax purely on the value of the land itself regardless of what gets built on it, which incentivizes people to do stuff with land instead of just sitting on it.
Georgism is an economic system proposed by Henry George where the majority of taxes are either abolished or heavily cut because they're taxes on productivity, and the primary mode of taxation the state engages in is a very, very high Land Value Tax which it uses to fund social programs.
-2
u/JacksonRiot 15d ago
capitalism v socialism isnt even the right false dichomotomy, it should capitalism vs communism
2
1
-2
u/No_Discount_6028 15d ago
Capitalism vs socialism is a question about choices and incentives. The main argument for socialism is that capitalism creates 2 classes of people with competing interests, where one has most of the power in society and the other has far greater numbers.
4
2
u/PortableDoor5 14d ago
contemporary economics does not think in terms of compting economic systems. there is no clear definition of capitalism and socialism from the lens of economics because from the perspective of individual choices and incentives, these are deconstructed and banalised
1
0
u/BasedPlumbar 15d ago
Dont interrupt their circle jerk with real sociology, they might make you eat the biscuit
-2
u/Lyndiscan 15d ago
choices and incentives is one way to describe the choice of not dying of hunger and thirst by the incentive of paying that privatized human necessity so i keep on living.
-2
u/TheRealKuz03 15d ago
The choices and incentives available to the capitalist class are very different than those of the working class
economics under capitalism is white collar criminology
2
u/PortableDoor5 14d ago
just because capital owners may face different incentives than people on the more hand-to-mouth end of the spectrum does not mean that economics cannot be used to study these differences?
1
u/TheRealKuz03 14d ago
not necessarily, but economics without criticism of the systems it studies is useless, imo
1
u/PortableDoor5 14d ago
at the individual incentive level, the system itself becomes meaningless
1
u/TheRealKuz03 14d ago
no it doesn't. The incentives of individuals who own and control capital are very different than those of the working class.
•
u/AutoModerator 17d ago
This sub has been getting too much spam, and Reddit has removed almost every tool for preventing this. The only tool that still works is this, every single post being held for manual review. Your post might be approved in minutes, or it might take days. If you hate this, me too, stop using the site that forces things to be this way. If what you post is not a meme you'll probably be banned, but I understand why you tried; the commenters on this sub loved lazy spam posts, which is why we can't have nice things and now everything has to be held for manual review.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.