Complex Ideas — Peter Radford

Important post on the philosophy (foundations) of economics as a discipline. Short for the amount of information it contains. Should read even though it is not directly relevant to MMT.

In it indirectly relevant to MMT, however, in that it recognizes that the social world is complex, as is the biological world and to a lesser degree the physical world. MMT economists get this by taking an open-ended approach that assumes reflexivity (learning) and emergence (synergism) in complex adaptive systems.

Conventional economists complain that MMT lack formal expression. Peter Radford explains why that is a distraction from the task at hand of explaining real world economies.

Basic to this is the systems approach, but not through formal systems. Social science is more akin to biology than physics as a category of science, and it is different from biology owing to the difference in intelligence, which gets expressed as information. Human intelligence is a highly developed complex system using the physical and biological as apparatus but not limited to them.

The Radford Free Press
Complex Ideas
Peter Radford