5 ms·

If you use the word "deserve" you're probably no longer talking about economics.

rfrey 10y ago
That's asinine. Economics is "the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth." (some dictionary favoured by Google). Thinking about what kinds of transfers of wealth and what allocations of resources are the most "fair" or "just" is what economics has always done. Just because one answer is "there is no discoverable fair or just allocation possible, and avoiding trying will have the best outcome", does not mean that answer gets to claim the entire discipline and any dissent is no longer "economics".
- thelittlenag 10y ago
  This is actually one of the first things that my econ classes covered: normative vs positive statements. Proper and correct economic analysis explicitly concerns itself with positive statements. These are statements that are factual and/or scientific. In this case, it would be things like estimating the maximum life times earnings of the average athlete. You can gather the data, develop a model, and crunch the numbers to test the model. The flip side are normative statements: i.e. how things ought to be, what values should be upheld, etc. At that point you are more properly concerned with philosophy, specifically morality, than purely economics. You can certainly use economic data, economic terms, economic models, etc in making your case, but ultimately you are arguing for a normative statement (e.g. what is a "just" or "fair" allocation?). That's not to say that economists don't make normative statements, they do and all too often. But that's usually politics.
  - rfrey 10y ago
    The logical positivist school of economics is one branch, and dominated the field for a time. It is far from the complete story though.
    - thelittlenag 10y ago
      Logical positivism is a school of philosophy. It certainly impacted the view of what constituted scientific analysis in the realm of economics. I'm more talking about the development of economics as a science, rather than a branch of politics or philosophy.
      - wfo 10y ago
        It is inextricably linked to social (and therefore normative) values however, that's why it sits firmly as a social science and not a hard one. Everything about economics is a normative value judgment. It is in fact a normative value judgment to claim it is a 'science' more akin to physics than philosophy -- this gives a faux-neutral, faux-objective validity to a field which should not have it. The metrics economists choose to use, the usually horrifyingly incorrect assumptions (rational consumers, competition, efficiency, etc) they make in order to get to a place where they can apply some mathematical theory -- all normative judgments central to the field, just made implicit.
        thelittlenag 10y ago
        Economics as a discipline can certainly be positive and scientific. Developing a model to predict the elasticity of demand, collecting the data, testing the model, and independently replicating the results is certainly science, with all the pitfalls of doing science well. Answering whether one should raise/lower the price of some product P to maximize profit for company C is a normative question. BTW, calling economics a social science doesn't mean that economics gets to shun scientific methods, nor is economics any less a science than physics. Being a social science just means that the discipline will apply scientific methods to develop models of, collect data about, or directly experiment on human subjects. (Physicists, and normal humans alike, don't view individual particles as human and feel no qualms about performing whatever experiments they might feel like, no matter how high energy.) Humans tend to be understandably nervous about being test subjects and this has limited the pace-of and extent-of progress that economists have been able to make. The extent to which economics relies on inaccurate models ("rational consumers, competition, efficiency" as you say), is the extent to which personal morals, governments, and societies inhibit progress. One thing I find very cool about economics is that it can put bounds on how much these barriers to our scientific understanding cost and benefit us. There is a cost to having a better model than "rational consumers" and we can know how much that is. But whether or not one ought to pay that cost is outside the realm of economics. Overall, I think your claim is more rightly applied not to Economics the discipline but to Economists the practitioners.
tankenmate 10y ago
And yet humans, collectively, pay what they feel they should (or if they don't value it the market disappears). You can't talk about economics without also considering what people want and what they believe and how that affects what they pay. Otherwise how can you explain that educators in Finland are held in higher regard, paid more, and are required to be more accomplished?

rfrey 10y ago

That's asinine. Economics is "the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth." (some dictionary favoured by Google). Thinking about what kinds of transfers of wealth and what allocations of resources are the most "fair" or "just" is what economics has always done. Just because one answer is "there is no discoverable fair or just allocation possible, and avoiding trying will have the best outcome", does not mean that answer gets to claim the entire discipline and any dissent is no longer "economics".

thelittlenag 10y ago
This is actually one of the first things that my econ classes covered: normative vs positive statements. Proper and correct economic analysis explicitly concerns itself with positive statements. These are statements that are factual and/or scientific. In this case, it would be things like estimating the maximum life times earnings of the average athlete. You can gather the data, develop a model, and crunch the numbers to test the model. The flip side are normative statements: i.e. how things ought to be, what values should be upheld, etc. At that point you are more properly concerned with philosophy, specifically morality, than purely economics. You can certainly use economic data, economic terms, economic models, etc in making your case, but ultimately you are arguing for a normative statement (e.g. what is a "just" or "fair" allocation?). That's not to say that economists don't make normative statements, they do and all too often. But that's usually politics.
- rfrey 10y ago
  The logical positivist school of economics is one branch, and dominated the field for a time. It is far from the complete story though.
  - thelittlenag 10y ago
    Logical positivism is a school of philosophy. It certainly impacted the view of what constituted scientific analysis in the realm of economics. I'm more talking about the development of economics as a science, rather than a branch of politics or philosophy.
    - wfo 10y ago
      It is inextricably linked to social (and therefore normative) values however, that's why it sits firmly as a social science and not a hard one. Everything about economics is a normative value judgment. It is in fact a normative value judgment to claim it is a 'science' more akin to physics than philosophy -- this gives a faux-neutral, faux-objective validity to a field which should not have it. The metrics economists choose to use, the usually horrifyingly incorrect assumptions (rational consumers, competition, efficiency, etc) they make in order to get to a place where they can apply some mathematical theory -- all normative judgments central to the field, just made implicit.
      - thelittlenag 10y ago
        Economics as a discipline can certainly be positive and scientific. Developing a model to predict the elasticity of demand, collecting the data, testing the model, and independently replicating the results is certainly science, with all the pitfalls of doing science well. Answering whether one should raise/lower the price of some product P to maximize profit for company C is a normative question. BTW, calling economics a social science doesn't mean that economics gets to shun scientific methods, nor is economics any less a science than physics. Being a social science just means that the discipline will apply scientific methods to develop models of, collect data about, or directly experiment on human subjects. (Physicists, and normal humans alike, don't view individual particles as human and feel no qualms about performing whatever experiments they might feel like, no matter how high energy.) Humans tend to be understandably nervous about being test subjects and this has limited the pace-of and extent-of progress that economists have been able to make. The extent to which economics relies on inaccurate models ("rational consumers, competition, efficiency" as you say), is the extent to which personal morals, governments, and societies inhibit progress. One thing I find very cool about economics is that it can put bounds on how much these barriers to our scientific understanding cost and benefit us. There is a cost to having a better model than "rational consumers" and we can know how much that is. But whether or not one ought to pay that cost is outside the realm of economics. Overall, I think your claim is more rightly applied not to Economics the discipline but to Economists the practitioners.

tankenmate 10y ago

And yet humans, collectively, pay what they feel they should (or if they don't value it the market disappears). You can't talk about economics without also considering what people want and what they believe and how that affects what they pay. Otherwise how can you explain that educators in Finland are held in higher regard, paid more, and are required to be more accomplished?