Thursday, February 10, 2011

High Priests of the Economy

Economics is a social science.  Economists are like priests of the religion expressing various theories in the best attempt to explain how the system operates.  They struggle to employ hard science and legitimize the truth of their theories with a facade of hard science.  The trouble is that they have their hands on the levers that attempt to control the economy.  The ones that do the most damage are the tools of those that benefit from the damage.

Economists that could do the most good are not the ones in control.

I am not sure which economist would do the most good!  I have little faith in anybody's theory unless I can understand it from a fundamental standpoint in basic simplicity of building blocks from the bottom up assembly and the top down break down.  Then put it in a UML diagram.  I want to see a lot of hard numbers that can be verified.  I like accounting and economics for dummies.

In judging economists perhaps the best rule is not to attempt to understand clearly what they support as a theory but ironically to follow the money and ask who benefits from what they expound upon?

Some economist have an excellent ideology.  Some are just misguided by their own ideology, not influenced by association and influence of moneyed special interest or political power.   Others have a misguided ideology that is used to further the agenda of the special interest.  Some just are puppets for pay.  Some economists just say they are for whatever it can get them.  Some are simply crooks, knowingly abetting fraud and theft for a piece of the action.

Today I listened to a guy that started his presentation by saying:  "I am not an economist but..."

Maybe that is a guy to listen to.  Maybe he is an Economic Unitarian?

Check it out here for the short version.

Here for the long version.

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