Zombie economics
"In the Graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated main stream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many--members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs--that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off--brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again.
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What Hacker News says
- There are several books with the word “Zombie” on the title that can specifically teach you exactly about that!
Some of them actually authored by Economics Nobel Prize winners ;)
Here:
"Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future" by Paul Krugman (2020)
"Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us" by John Quiggin (2010)
Bonus:
"Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely - 2008
"The Myth of the Rational Market" by Justin Fox - 2009
"The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2007
- > In an efficient market without monopolies there's no such thing as rent seeking
Seriously, read Zombie Economics (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9270.html)
- You appear to believe I accept your premises, definitions, logic, and conclusions concerning a social contract, or that it's material at all to this matter. I don't.
However, to invoke your own logic, assuming you've reached age of majority, you've consciously accepted that contract of which you speak.
The problem is that democracy...
Indeed. Those liberal concepts are rather problematic in many ways. I disagree that they have no feedback, and arguably democratic forms of governance have far better feedback systems than others. Their chief advantage isn't that they achieve the best results, but as Plato observed: they avoid the worst.
Libertarian dogma is grounded in von Mises Praxeology, and its axiomatic refutation of empiricism.
You state that there is no feedback in markets.
No, I do not.
The efficient-market hypothesis is bunk. See Quiggin, Zombie Economics. Full chapter on the topic.
- >"However, to invoke your own logic, assuming you've reached age of majority, you've consciously accepted that contract of which you speak."
I have not agreed to the contract. I never have, and I never will. The only way that my actions can be interpreted as acceptance of the offer is that I have not left the nation I currently reside within; and this is not how contracts work.
>"taxes are and always will be a form of mutual coercion, mutually agreed on."
I never agreed.
>"democratic forms of governance have far better feedback systems than others. Their chief advantage isn't that they achieve the best results, but as Plato observed: they avoid the worst."
I agree with you entirely, that democracy is the best type of government available at the moment, but that is faint praise.
>"The efficient-market hypothesis is bunk. See Quiggin, Zombie Economics. Full chapter on the topic."
I doubt we will ever agree on this, and I accept that there are a number of valid criticisms of EMH; but if the market is inefficient, some people should be able to find the inefficiencies and profit from them, of which there are few examples (except ephemeral ones).
