Why saddened? … I admit i don’t know economics at all :-(
Because of what it says about economics—that an outsider can reach the same conclusion, for the same reason, as (half of) the “experts”. Remember the “layshadow test”? If an academic field is such that a layperson can come in, spend a few hours, and produce output indistinguishable from people who have spent years “learning” the field, then that field is lost because the inferential distance is low, implying little knowledge accumulation.
That’s what seems to be going on here.
And what is the other side’s standard response to my (apparently well-known) question?
I just found out there’s a Wikipedia article about the debate. It doesn’t give the response to that critique, but as far as I know, the response is that it requires flexible prices throughout the economy and won’t work if prices are “sticky”.
Correction: Here’s another critique from there:
Mitchell criticizes this because, he asserts, the falling wages of babysitters only solves the problem if it reduces the desire of couples to save, which is not supported by any research.[9] The only effect of falling wages would be to increase the real value of nominal contracts. In other words, couples would have to spend more time babysitting before they acquired the amount necessary to leave the cooperative. Mitchell concludes that the problem is greater aggregate desire to save than can be funded by existing administrative debt, and that the solution is thus either to reduce (desire for) savings or, more likely increase spending by simply issuing more scrip.
Because of what it says about economics—that an outsider can reach the same conclusion, for the same reason, as (half of) the “experts”. Remember the “layshadow test”? If an academic field is such that a layperson can come in, spend a few hours, and produce output indistinguishable from people who have spent years “learning” the field, then that field is lost because the inferential distance is low, implying little knowledge accumulation.
I’m not sure that’s always true. For example, in my field, mathematics, there are a lot of results that are much easier to explain and learn then they were to discover.
I’m not sure that’s always true. For example, in my field, mathematics, there are a lot of results that are much easier to explain and learn then they were to discover.
With any NP problem, it’s much easier to verify the result than to come up with it. What you describe probably fits this pattern.
In economics, the problem is not that established results, or even open problems, are easy to explain. The problem is that credentialed experts keep arguing about toy problems that are easily explained to a layman, and are unable to produce any insight beyond what an intelligent layman would also be able to figure out quickly. What’s more, they can’t even reach consensus that the problem is intractable, each arrogantly claiming that his ideologically favored theory is correct, and his opponents disagree because they are delusional or dishonest charlatans. (The latter is usually expressed more diplomatically, though it’s actually quite common even for top-rank economists’ writing to drip with unconcealed scorn and contempt of the most arrogant sort.)
Why saddened? And what is the other side’s standard response to my (apparently well-known) question? I admit I don’t know economics at all :-(
Because of what it says about economics—that an outsider can reach the same conclusion, for the same reason, as (half of) the “experts”. Remember the “layshadow test”? If an academic field is such that a layperson can come in, spend a few hours, and produce output indistinguishable from people who have spent years “learning” the field, then that field is lost because the inferential distance is low, implying little knowledge accumulation.
That’s what seems to be going on here.
I just found out there’s a Wikipedia article about the debate. It doesn’t give the response to that critique, but as far as I know, the response is that it requires flexible prices throughout the economy and won’t work if prices are “sticky”.
Correction: Here’s another critique from there:
I’m not sure that’s always true. For example, in my field, mathematics, there are a lot of results that are much easier to explain and learn then they were to discover.
With any NP problem, it’s much easier to verify the result than to come up with it. What you describe probably fits this pattern.
In economics, the problem is not that established results, or even open problems, are easy to explain. The problem is that credentialed experts keep arguing about toy problems that are easily explained to a layman, and are unable to produce any insight beyond what an intelligent layman would also be able to figure out quickly. What’s more, they can’t even reach consensus that the problem is intractable, each arrogantly claiming that his ideologically favored theory is correct, and his opponents disagree because they are delusional or dishonest charlatans. (The latter is usually expressed more diplomatically, though it’s actually quite common even for top-rank economists’ writing to drip with unconcealed scorn and contempt of the most arrogant sort.)