Aristocracy Is Dead ... So Why Isn't Orthodox MacroEconomics Gone Too?

  (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Having studied biology for years before ever paying attention to economics, I immediately wondered where the heck orthodox economists get their many, strange ideas.

Nothing made sense until something plausible dawned on me:

Orthodox MacroEconomics is an extension of Aristocratic "Court Politics" 

and is at heart a management theory for how an upper class can best rule "the masses."

To me, that explains nearly everything about orthodox macroeconomics and its inane list of things that human behavior "should" include. It's an unfortunate set of vague myths blindly promulgated by groups as diverse as aristocrats, property owners, cattle herders, and capitalists. Meanwhile, we always knew that human behavior can evolve as fast as new contexts arrive (at least so far). There's a fundamental dichotomy here. Peasant reality is that we have zero predictive power. We only know that recombination on all levels works, with few bounds.

What are the implications? A rare, honest person states one aspect of the obvious.

Aristocracy is Dead

So why is orthodox macroeconomics still kicking us while it holds us down? We're only down because we're LETTING a dead-man-walking hold us down.

Well, that, and also partly because too many dimwit escaped serfs only want to be Aristocrats themselves, if given the chance. Doh!

Meanwhile, as always:

Actual Human Behavior Makes A Mockery Of Orthodox Economic Models  

... (but Rulers Don't Care To Notice)

Ya think? So there's yet another another flaw in orthodox economics: the presumption that emerging aggregate outcomes should be logical? Really? Why doesn't this invalidate the entire field? There's a seemingly obvious answer.

"Thaler began to keep a list of things that people did that made a mockery of economic models of rational choice."

Well, that's yet another indicator that orthodox macro-economics grew out of aristocratic politics, not tribal common sense based on trial-&-error progress.

"Logic" is just a body of perceived patterns, which we use when trying to extrapolate from past experiences to future predictions.

Biology, chemistry, physics, etc, etc have amply proven that the past order of any system does NOT predict all of it's future options.

Aggregate degrees of freedom are a function first of aggregate inter-dependencies - which grow factorially with system growth - PLUS any changes in external context, which may or may not change at seemingly fixed or unpredictable rates, but always change nevertheless.

Orthodox macro-economics has become an increasingly impossible yoke to live with. This is one parasitic baby we'd do well to throw out with the accumulating bathwater.

Call it "Marie's Dilemma":

What Will It Take To Trigger Some Cultural Adaptations In This Country? We're Long Overdue.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Video too.

From FDR to Obama, John Dingell rates the presidents

This story illustrates, indirectly as well as directly, much that's wrong with our approach to shepherding adaptive public policy. Some immediate thoughts, while reading this.

1) too few get experience or practice at legislating (only kids of politicians & rich people get to be unpaid pages & interns in Congress)

2) too many Congresspeople follow their relatives, or mentors? (may be changing?)

3) the turnover & diversification rate in Congress is far too slow (no one should be irreplaceable; resiliency means many are capable of taking over on a moment's notice; Congress is no longer representative of our changing electorate in all 50 states, regardless of ethnicity, which shouldn't matter to a melting pot)

4) Congress itself is too small, and too easily co-opted by ridiculous things like campaign finance

That's just outside of the many inside insights that Dingell mentions. Read the article to hear his many interesting observations. Will this be enough to make more people think?

Makes you wonder what it will take to trigger some cultural adaptations in this country. We're long overdue.

Will we adapt?

Or will we stop ourselves in our cultural tracks?

Can't Make This Up. Hoover & Roosevelt as DoppleKabukiGangers

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

"Given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines."

- Roosevelt adviser Marriner Eccles, on the campaign of 1932

and

The fight that just won’t die.

It was all an accident?

Roosevelt eventually unintentionally DID what Hoover originally? intended, but wouldn't/couldn't/didn't get DONE in time to matter?

In retrospect, it seems clear that as nations and populations grow, that their fundamental operations must be re-organized, as a function of sheer scale alone, if not context. "Experts" such as Hoover can easily do more harm than good by unnecessarily opposing required change that they don't understand, while "beginners" like FDR can do tremendous good simply by having the courage to allow change, regardless of whether they understand it.

There is a fundamental difference between understanding process, and understanding process change - and especially rate of change.

Above all else, we need our entire range of people & personalities to have more humility, so that they can embrace and explore the potential of our constantly increasing diversity?

Have aggregate options, will explore!

That should be on our national business card.

Ever faster change, from grandparents to parents to grandchildren, is something we all have to embrace, if that generational cycle is going to continue unconstrained.

This Hoover/FDR tantrum may be a great lesson on intentions, adjustments and allowances, where both players come away looking better than all originally thought, but for reasons entirely different than ALL initially presumed! :)

History is never what we're actually told?

There's a fundamental difference between a tactical officer, and a LEADER willing and able to let tacticians operate?

It takes a different kind of leader, for every scale (and tempo) of policy development?

How A Family Went A Year Without Sugar - Could An Industry Lobby Go A Year w/o NeoLiberalism?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

How An Australian family went a year without sugar

There are those who cannot instantly reason by analogy. So let's challenge them to simply practice doing so, in small steps.

Start off imagining that NeoLiberalism is synonymous with Corporate Welfare.

After all, even Albert Einstein said that imagination was far more important than knowledge, or even logic.

Now, imagine the MICC keiretsu surviving a year w/o ... well, all the MICC policy incest!

Go ahead, just imagine something along those lines. See, you can do it. It won't break anything. Now imagine many things, and then start selecting any of those novel thoughts which actually are unexpectedly supported by available evidence. It's called pattern recognition.

See! You're actually THINKING!!! Anyone can do it. Even writers from San Francisco with PhDs. :)

Now just do a equally simple exercise every morning, with your yoga. Start small and ramp up, so you don't overload your amygdala and panic. Before you know it, you'll be able to easily & instantly model changing circumstances, dynamic systems .... EVEN CHANGING CONTEXT!!!

Can't hurt to try. You may eventually even see your animosity to change transformed to open curiosity. Acquiring the habit of quick thinking is what all teamwork begins with, regardless of what those team skills are applied to.

Now back to the subject. Why can't some country today go a year without NeoLiberalism? Why not OUR country?

Charles Babington and Jennifer Agiesta — Half Of Americans Think Our Democracy Needs 'A Lot Of Changes' Or A Complete Overhaul

Americans enter 2014 with a profoundly negative view of their government, expressing little hope that elected officials can or will solve the nation's biggest problems, a new poll finds.

Half say America's system of democracy needs either "a lot of changes" or a complete overhaul, according to the poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 1 in 20 says it works well and needs no changes.

Americans, who have a reputation for optimism, have a sharply pessimistic take on their government after years of disappointment in Washington.

The percentage of Americans saying the nation is heading in the right direction hasn't topped 50 in about a decade. In the new poll, 70 percent lack confidence in the government's ability "to make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014."…

Regardless of the issue, however, Americans express remarkably little confidence that the federal government can make real progress.

For instance, 86 percent of those who called health care reform a top priority said they want the government to put "a lot" or "a great deal" of effort into it. But about half of them (49 percent) are "not at all confident" there will be real progress, and 20 percent are only "slightly confident."

The third item on the lest is the deficit and debt. Even the authors of this report is clueless that the deficit and therefore the debt are endogenous.

Even on an issue completely within the federal government's control, the budget and national debt, 65 percent of those who called it a priority say they have no confidence in the government's ability to fix it. Another 20 percent are only "slightly confident."

But the good new is that people are at least looking for change. Time to propose a complete overhaul, putting people first and thinking globally, which is what it will take to address climate change.

The Huffington Post
Half Of Americans Think Our Democracy Needs 'A Lot Of Changes' Or A Complete Overhaul

Charles Babington and Jennifer Agiesta

Chris Dillow — Institutions, Culture & Change

Institutions shape culture, and the imprint of institutions lasts after the institutions themselves disappear.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Institutions, Culture & Change
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle (UK)