5 ms·

> Printing free money has consequences Yet the story we heard over and over from "experts" was that for some complicated theoretical reason exploding the money

> Printing free money has consequences Yet the story we heard over and over from "experts" was that for some complicated theoretical reason exploding the money supply wouldn't cause inflation --- and then, after inflation became impossible to just ignore, that the inflation was due to complicated "supply chain hiccup" and would be "transitory". Whatever. Common sense is a real thing that exists. Expertise doesn't make someone correct: it just makes him knowledgeable. An expert under pressure to arrive at a false conclusion (often for political reasons) will use that knowledge to bamboozle you. The general public should think more critically and reflect on why they allowed motivated economic experts to tell them blatant (and not just in hindsight) lies about the consequences of running the money printer.

xadhominemx 5y ago
The spike in energy and commodity costs has way more to do with supply side dynamics. Upstream suppliers have been hesitant to add capacity because they can’t tell if the spike in demand is sustainable or just a snapback post-lockdown. And OPEC in particular is pressing their advantage when no bank wants to fund frackers that have over invested and then wiped out 3 or 4 times now. We are seeing this in many industries. Inflation hawks/ideologues have called 15 out of the past 0 hyperinflationary cycles and this one will be no different.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
"Trust the experts" has been the motto going around for a while now. It makes it easy to outsource your own critical thinking by letting the "experts" do it. The experts should just be one data point not THE SOURCE OF ULTIMATE TRUTH.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  If you aren't a doctor your "own critical thinking" will have little bearing on the correct treatment or prevention of a disease/illness/injury, doubly so for complex ailments for viruses, cancers and genetic diseases. Pretty much the same goes for civil engineering, particle physics and any other highly trained field that requires vast quantities of knowledge to even intuit probable outcomes. Why is economics any different? I don't believe it is, I would say economics falls into a similar bucket as weather science where there are always large unknowns that make broad predictions imprecise but that doesn't invalidate their expertise and ignoring it is definitely foolish. Experts are experts for a reason. If you could intuit all difficult problems as a layman we would have already advanced science far beyond where we currently stand.
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    Skepticism of medical practice isn't a stupid Steve-Jobs-like trust in woo over science. It's getting multiple opinions, reading the underlying papers, asking "does this explanation make sense?", and checking for obvious mistakes --- as medicine, like any other human endeavor, is full of human error. Plenty of people have found cures for their medical problems only after they kept doggedly pressing medical people for things that made sense and actually worked for them. Something didn't seem right to them, and they pulled and pulled at threads to find out what it was. You don't need a medical degree to do that: you just need a brain. It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. Too many people get genuinely offended when you indicate that you're going to do your own thinking and not just follow "experts". They bring out cliches like "experts are experts for a reason" and "look at this one guy who did something stupid" and neglect, or even suppress, the idea that we at all, each and every one of us, scientists of our lives and competent to make our own decisions and form our own opinions.
    - jpgvm 5y ago
      There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. In a vacuum, yes. Skepticism isn't just healthy, it's what powers science itself. However this isn't a vacuum and most people that "question the experts" aren't doing so in good-faith. Your ability to question an existing theory is proportional to your understanding the problem space itself and knowledge of the existing facts. Basically in order to question an expert realistically you need to be an expert yourself. This shouldn't be controversial, but for some reason it is. :/
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        >There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. There's a current trend with labeling people who disagree with your narrative as 'rejecting expertise'. People aren't rejecting expertise. They're following different experts than the one's you approve of. Descarte's, maybe you've heard of him, rejected the expertise that the sun revolved around the Earth despite all of the mainstream experts disagreement. This pattern has repeated countless times throughout history: labotomies, thalidomide, antiseptic procedure...that's just science...god knows the number of people executed for going against the expertise backed narrative that a dictatorship is not an ideal form of government. The problem with 'trusting experts' (which is a classic logical fallacy)...is WHICH EXPERTS? At the end of the day it's all a narrative and you pick the narrative you wish to follow backed by the experts that support your narrative. It's disengenous to claim otherwise. And that's literally a politician or leaders job is to sift through all of the experts and all of the other bullshit and try to pull a good decision out of it. And as a human being, that should be your job as well.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  It's still true a lot of the the time.
bojangleslover 5y ago
The same experts who leave education and real estate, two things everybody wants, off the CPI
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  What? Both are included; https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...
Spooky23 5y ago
> The general public should think more critically and reflect on why they allowed motivated economic experts to tell them blatant (and not just in hindsight) lies about the consequences of running the money printer. The reality of not taking action has consequences. The opening of the money floodgates in the 80s blunted the pain of the late 60s and 70s. The war economy of 2002- likewise dulled the lows.
titzer 5y ago
> motivated economic experts Pretty much all economics that you just casually hear about is going to be economics intentionally put in service of furthering the system of rich and powerful elites. It's just more propaganda pushed at you and has absolutely no relation to what is good for society, the average person, the longevity of our civilization, or the environment. It is, in short, sophisticated bullshit to let rich people keep getting richer and live like the leeches they are.
goodpoint 5y ago
If you are referring to economists, the "experts" are not experts. Knowledge matters and is important, otherwise we go down the path of novax and flat earth crowds.
- thowaway1122337 5y ago
  like novax and flat earth are equivalent gaslighter
bell-cot 5y ago
That public seems happy to be lied to, on all sorts of subjects, by politicians & salesmen & etc. Why should "the economy" and "economics experts" be special cases?

xadhominemx 5y ago

The spike in energy and commodity costs has way more to do with supply side dynamics. Upstream suppliers have been hesitant to add capacity because they can’t tell if the spike in demand is sustainable or just a snapback post-lockdown. And OPEC in particular is pressing their advantage when no bank wants to fund frackers that have over invested and then wiped out 3 or 4 times now. We are seeing this in many industries. Inflation hawks/ideologues have called 15 out of the past 0 hyperinflationary cycles and this one will be no different.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

"Trust the experts" has been the motto going around for a while now. It makes it easy to outsource your own critical thinking by letting the "experts" do it. The experts should just be one data point not THE SOURCE OF ULTIMATE TRUTH.

jpgvm 5y ago
If you aren't a doctor your "own critical thinking" will have little bearing on the correct treatment or prevention of a disease/illness/injury, doubly so for complex ailments for viruses, cancers and genetic diseases. Pretty much the same goes for civil engineering, particle physics and any other highly trained field that requires vast quantities of knowledge to even intuit probable outcomes. Why is economics any different? I don't believe it is, I would say economics falls into a similar bucket as weather science where there are always large unknowns that make broad predictions imprecise but that doesn't invalidate their expertise and ignoring it is definitely foolish. Experts are experts for a reason. If you could intuit all difficult problems as a layman we would have already advanced science far beyond where we currently stand.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  Skepticism of medical practice isn't a stupid Steve-Jobs-like trust in woo over science. It's getting multiple opinions, reading the underlying papers, asking "does this explanation make sense?", and checking for obvious mistakes --- as medicine, like any other human endeavor, is full of human error. Plenty of people have found cures for their medical problems only after they kept doggedly pressing medical people for things that made sense and actually worked for them. Something didn't seem right to them, and they pulled and pulled at threads to find out what it was. You don't need a medical degree to do that: you just need a brain. It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. Too many people get genuinely offended when you indicate that you're going to do your own thinking and not just follow "experts". They bring out cliches like "experts are experts for a reason" and "look at this one guy who did something stupid" and neglect, or even suppress, the idea that we at all, each and every one of us, scientists of our lives and competent to make our own decisions and form our own opinions.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. In a vacuum, yes. Skepticism isn't just healthy, it's what powers science itself. However this isn't a vacuum and most people that "question the experts" aren't doing so in good-faith. Your ability to question an existing theory is proportional to your understanding the problem space itself and knowledge of the existing facts. Basically in order to question an expert realistically you need to be an expert yourself. This shouldn't be controversial, but for some reason it is. :/
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      >There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. There's a current trend with labeling people who disagree with your narrative as 'rejecting expertise'. People aren't rejecting expertise. They're following different experts than the one's you approve of. Descarte's, maybe you've heard of him, rejected the expertise that the sun revolved around the Earth despite all of the mainstream experts disagreement. This pattern has repeated countless times throughout history: labotomies, thalidomide, antiseptic procedure...that's just science...god knows the number of people executed for going against the expertise backed narrative that a dictatorship is not an ideal form of government. The problem with 'trusting experts' (which is a classic logical fallacy)...is WHICH EXPERTS? At the end of the day it's all a narrative and you pick the narrative you wish to follow backed by the experts that support your narrative. It's disengenous to claim otherwise. And that's literally a politician or leaders job is to sift through all of the experts and all of the other bullshit and try to pull a good decision out of it. And as a human being, that should be your job as well.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
It's still true a lot of the the time.

bojangleslover 5y ago

The same experts who leave education and real estate, two things everybody wants, off the CPI

mikeyouse 5y ago
What? Both are included; https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...

Spooky23 5y ago

> The general public should think more critically and reflect on why they allowed motivated economic experts to tell them blatant (and not just in hindsight) lies about the consequences of running the money printer. The reality of not taking action has consequences. The opening of the money floodgates in the 80s blunted the pain of the late 60s and 70s. The war economy of 2002- likewise dulled the lows.

titzer 5y ago

> motivated economic experts Pretty much all economics that you just casually hear about is going to be economics intentionally put in service of furthering the system of rich and powerful elites. It's just more propaganda pushed at you and has absolutely no relation to what is good for society, the average person, the longevity of our civilization, or the environment. It is, in short, sophisticated bullshit to let rich people keep getting richer and live like the leeches they are.

goodpoint 5y ago

If you are referring to economists, the "experts" are not experts. Knowledge matters and is important, otherwise we go down the path of novax and flat earth crowds.

thowaway1122337 5y ago
like novax and flat earth are equivalent gaslighter

bell-cot 5y ago

That public seems happy to be lied to, on all sorts of subjects, by politicians & salesmen & etc. Why should "the economy" and "economics experts" be special cases?