Bill Black — Yes, Theoclassical “Economists [are] Basically Immoral”

Bill is on a roll.

The failures of theoclassical economists and economics are total and myriad. Many of their theories are long-falsified dogmas. Their methodological preference is econometrics – which gives the worst possible results in bubbles and when accounting control fraud epidemics occur. Theoclassical policies are intensely criminogenic, anti-democratic, and grotesquely unfair. Their proudest creations – their risk and price models – proved to massively understate risk and overstate asset values. They betray the scientific method that they purport to exemplify because they are overwhelmingly mono-disciplinary, in thrall to their dogmas, driven by self-interest, incapable or unwilling to follow logical standards of internal consistency, and intellectually dishonest. They award Nobel Prizes to economists who fail what economists claim is the decisive test of truth and success – predictive ability. Theoclassical economists are infamous for their arrogance, praising their field as the only social science worthy of the term “science” and celebrating its “imperial” nature while ignoring work in other fields that has proven to have far superior predictive success. Theoclassical economists are infamous for their lack of altruism.

But the gravest failure of theoclassical economists; and one that is the source of many of these other deficiencies I have just described is that they are basically unethical. The obvious aspects of this lack of ethics are that theoclassical economists act as if their conflicts of interest are so irrelevant that they do not even require disclosure – much less avoidance. Theoclassical economists, however, are immoral in a more fundamental manner. They repeatedly advance positions that are profoundly unethical – and bad economics and bad criminology.

Ouch.

New Economic Perspectives
Yes, Theoclassical “Economists [are] Basically Immoral”
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC