Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • The Ultimate Question of Economic Science: Eugenia or Dysgenia

    [P]eter Boettke posted an article by Paul Krugman yesterday which referred to the divisions in economics – with derision.

    And it’s been bothering me all night:

    Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives demonstrate an inter-temporal division of reproductive labor in their moral biases and cognitive biases.

    So why wouldn’t economists follow the same moral, inter-temporal division of labor?

    Well, they do. All humans do.

    Austrians represent the conservative long term: accumulation and competitiveness, and new Keynesian progressives the short term: consumption and reproduction.

    The question is whether consumption/dysgenia or accumulation/eugenia is preferable.

    This is the central proposition. And we avoid answering it just as much as our ancestors avoided the question of the existence of gods.

    Until we answer that question all economic debate is just obscurant deception as a means of avoiding the central question of economics: what is it that we are solving for?

    I can answer that question because western history answered it for us.

  • Well, of course you can be wealthier if you don’t pay the costs of holding a mon

    Well, of course you can be wealthier if you don’t pay the costs of holding a monopoly on a territory. Free riding is profitable.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-04 06:14:00 UTC

  • THE ULTIMATE QUESTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE Peter Boettke posted an article by Pau

    THE ULTIMATE QUESTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE

    Peter Boettke posted an article by Paul Krugman yesterday which referred to the divisions in economics – with derision.

    And it’s been bothering me all night:

    Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives demonstrate an inter-temporal division of reproductive labor in their moral biases and cognitive biases.

    So why wouldn’t economists follow the same moral, inter-temporal division of labor?

    Well, they do. All humans do.

    Austrians represent the conservative long term: accumulation and competitiveness, and new Keynesian progressives the short term: consumption and reproduction.

    The question is whether consumption/dysgenia or accumulation/eugenia is preferable.

    This is the central proposition. And we avoid answering it just as much as our ancestors avoided the question of the existence of gods.

    Until we answer that question all economic debate is just obscurant deception as a means of avoiding the central question of economics: what is it that we are solving for?

    I can answer that question because western history answered it for us.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-02 04:01:00 UTC

  • ECONOMICS: LIES AND DAMNED LIES Growth = Productivity increase Expansion = Popul

    ECONOMICS: LIES AND DAMNED LIES

    Growth = Productivity increase

    Expansion = Population increase

    Expansion is bad, growth is good.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-30 02:49:00 UTC

  • Tilting Against The Market’s Use of Available Information

    Guest Post by Michael Phillip

    [A]ll the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) says is that markets use all available information. Which does not sound like much until one works through the implications. One of which is, as William Easterly states, economists correctly predicted that they could not correctly predict. In Cochrane’s words:

    “It’s fun to say we didn’t see the crisis coming, but the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics. This is probably the best-tested proposition in all the social sciences. Krugman knows this, so all he can do is huff and puff about his dislike for a theory whose central prediction is that nobody can be a reliable soothsayer.” – John Cochrane

  • Tilting Against The Market’s Use of Available Information

    Guest Post by Michael Phillip

    [A]ll the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) says is that markets use all available information. Which does not sound like much until one works through the implications. One of which is, as William Easterly states, economists correctly predicted that they could not correctly predict. In Cochrane’s words:

    “It’s fun to say we didn’t see the crisis coming, but the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics. This is probably the best-tested proposition in all the social sciences. Krugman knows this, so all he can do is huff and puff about his dislike for a theory whose central prediction is that nobody can be a reliable soothsayer.” – John Cochrane

  • Um … The Market Is A Computer.

    —“When I was in high school, I thought we should put the robots in charge. … Then I realized the market is a computer.”—
    Eli Harman

  • Um … The Market Is A Computer.

    —“When I was in high school, I thought we should put the robots in charge. … Then I realized the market is a computer.”—
    Eli Harman

  • think I could at this point reframe Samuelson and Mises both as a mutual failure

    http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2014/11/23/its-the-economics-that-got-small/I think I could at this point reframe Samuelson and Mises both as a mutual failure to understand the problems of general rules and arbitrary precision. Mises’ failure was to create the pseudoscientific argent instead of recognizing operationalism and intuitionism as more mature arguments.

    In this sense, Samuelson is half right in practice but meaningless in theory. While Mises was half right in theory and meaningless in practice.

    It’s actually a fascinating problem – which is why I work on it.

    Mises intuited and Samuelson did not, that morality was non arbitrary and could not be divorced from economic theory.

    None on the other 20th century thinkers could solve that problem either.

    We needed another near century to do it.

    The problem now is the uncomfortable task of reinserting morality into economics – And by that I mean quantitatively.

    Because I am fairly certain it is possible.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-27 12:43:00 UTC

  • POLITICIANS ARE ENTREPRENEURS OF EXTERNALITY (worth repeating) —“Politicians a

    POLITICIANS ARE ENTREPRENEURS OF EXTERNALITY

    (worth repeating)

    —“Politicians are entrepreneurs of externality. Appealing to politicians to deal with problems of externalities in general is rather like putting arsonists in charge of the fire brigade.”— Michael Philip

    Genius.

    (also guest posted on propertarianism.com)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-25 16:07:00 UTC