John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek are regarded as two of the twentieth century’s greatest economists. Modern day followers came together at the London School of Economics to debate the ideas of their intellectual heroes.
Weepin' Buddha on a frictionless incline! Economics is 80 years out of date!
Do physicists get together and rehash Bohr/Einsteign/Schroedinger discussions?
Do construction firms stage imagined discussions between outdated engineers?
Weepin Laozi, Imhotep & Wotan! This is appalling. Can't economics departments acknowledge that actual operations already moved on - 80 years ago, and have continued moving FURTHER on ever since?
We need an Operations Religion just to help economists worship at the Mirror of Obsolescence, so they can recognize it sooner. Further, we should insist on establishing operational shrines at the LSE and Harvard Department of Economics, specifically to counter the black holes for operational relevance which are manifesting there. Surely the LSE and HDE must be considered dangerous leaks in the Bozone Layer?
Note to acolytes of imagined academic heroes. You do NOT own operational reality. Get over it. It moved on via many added layers of orthogonal, operational dimensions, while you were still arguing over which obsolete tangent to follow into oblivion.
It's beyond pathetic or irrelevant. It's suicidal. Suicide via Luddite Credentials, in a race to extinction. The BBC should have also invited the acolytes of Kevorkian to the discussion. That would have at least made it educational for new students, as a warning example.
We need an Operations Religion just to help economists worship at the Mirror of Obsolescence, so they can recognize it sooner. Further, we should insist on establishing operational shrines at the LSE and Harvard Department of Economics, specifically to counter the black holes for operational relevance which are manifesting there. Surely the LSE and HDE must be considered dangerous leaks in the Bozone Layer?
Note to acolytes of imagined academic heroes. You do NOT own operational reality. Get over it. It moved on via many added layers of orthogonal, operational dimensions, while you were still arguing over which obsolete tangent to follow into oblivion.
It's beyond pathetic or irrelevant. It's suicidal. Suicide via Luddite Credentials, in a race to extinction. The BBC should have also invited the acolytes of Kevorkian to the discussion. That would have at least made it educational for new students, as a warning example.
Base to Roger, base to Roger, come in Roger... No one actually cares about this argument except heterodox people and bloggers... Do you read us? Over.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing has happened to academic economics as academic philosophy. It is ignored as practical and largely replaced for actual use. For example, businesses learned long ago that academic economists are useless, and they do not hire them.
ReplyDeleteOver turkey, I was explaining monetary economics from the MMT POV to a CPA/lawyer today in terms of SFC and he said, "Doesn't everyone know this? It's just flows." He also knew it was obvious that increasing money supply will not be inflationary if there is room for the economy to expand and not to run the economy using all available resources is just stupidly inefficient and wasteful.
"businesses learned long ago that academic economists are useless, and they do not hire them"
ReplyDeleteSo why, for the love of the gods, do we actively RECRUIT these idiots to design and implement fiscal policy nationwide?
Here's a newsflash to businesspeople. You can't ignore macro-policy forever. Unless you assume the where your Titannic business plans operate can't go down.
We're simply back to 2-stage optimization. We need ways to invest in optimizing the combination of [system+components], not either in isolation. That means investing in democracy as well as your business.
Just discussing this with my CPA/lawyer friend today. We agree that the the "paradox of greed" is complementary to the "paradox of thrift" — and more prevalent in business. Many would prefer to grab theirs now even though it shrinks the pie and they get less in the end instead of pursuing return on coordination. Basically, businesspeople do not trust each other to coordination in this fashion, so they go for it alone. A good number of them estimate the probability of being caught if they skirt the law, together with the probability that they will actually get stuck with the charge if they are caught. It's the culture.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I was just reading a management book warning business leaders not to emphasize competition within the organization since it is counterproductive. It said that they should be competing with competitors and the way to do this most effectively is by encouraging a balance of competition and cooperation within the organization. Again, it's a matter of culture.
Here's a newsflash to businesspeople. You can't ignore macro-policy forever.
ReplyDeleteI was also talking to my friend about this today, too. I put it in terms of policy space. The political argument is over how much policy space govt should have and most business people want to limit govt policy space other than in ways that directly benefit them. They know that the macroeconomists don't have a clue, so they don't pay much attention to them other than as ideologues. E.g., they back the conservative neoliberal economists who they perceive to favor their interests.
Especially in such a divisive political environment as we have now, practical people don't see any hope of a coordinated policy and try to get as much policy that benefits them as they can.
It's all very short term thinking, like running a company toward the next quarterly report.
Just reading another management article about the conflict in HP between their traditional culture and how they perceive they need to compete now. They used to be a value-driven company and now they have abandoned that approach for a more expedient one, which is really not benefiting the company but management seems to think that they have to do it to compete today. The theory is that if you don't compete today, you won't be here tomorrow, so they leave tomorrow until tomorrow.
Bingo, Tom: "It's the culture." and for those who missed it, "Again, it's a matter of culture."
ReplyDeleteMy big unresolved question is how we start to change this culture. I've started commenting heavily at a progressive website based here in Alabama to try to get the message out. Starting to get some pushback, so maybe I can educate a few people. It has been shown that progressives seem to have a more open mind and willingness to change than conservatives. We'll see.
But above and beyond all that, what you said about people focusing only on their short term, isolated interests is the big problem. If we can't start talking to each other about new ideas, emerging options, return on coordination, etc., we are, as "Lori Franko" used to say, FREAKIN' DOOMED!
Right, Ben Franklin launched the USA with his famous "Table Talk" on compromise & coordination at the original assembly in 1776.
ReplyDeleteIf we don't co-scale such Table Talks along with our rate of scaling size & diversity, we won't keep that original spirit, or this country, alive. It's simple math.
http://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/mainstream-macroeconomics-a-complete-shambles/
ReplyDeleteI rest my case.
"Unless you assume the where your Titannic business plans operate can't go down."
ReplyDeleteOops. Meant to say
"Unless you assume [that] the [ship] where your Titannic business plans operate, can't go down."