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Behavioural economics isn’t very interesting really because it limits itself with describing the sub-optimal behaviour of humans and not approaching optimality.
by qubex 9y ago
Behavioural economics isn’t very interesting really because it limits itself with describing the sub-optimal behaviour of humans and not approaching optimality. It’s analogous to a hypothetical branch of engineering that disregards physics and mechanics and concentrates on folk wisdom (of the ”heavier stuff falls faster” variety). Why bother if it just leads to no betterment whatsoever?
That said, economics (as opposed to physics) suffers from a dearth of conserved quantities, and thus few useful symmetries to build laws upon.
- rumcajz 9y agoIsn't it because economy studies systems composed of human beings rather than idealized homines economici? What's the point of describing a system that doesn't exist in the real world? To give a concrete example, being from the Ostblock, I've lived through the "voucher privatization" that was very much based on the idealized homo economicus model and failed to account for sociological factors. The result was a decade of Mafia-run state. Shrug.