3 ms·

It's funny to read that thread. There is stuff I agree with there! And more stuff I disagree with or is totally unfounded. - First of all, I have no interest

It's funny to read that thread. There is stuff I agree with there! And more stuff I disagree with or is totally unfounded. - First of all, I have no interest in or patience for Ayn Rand. I don't know any economists who take her remotely seriously. All of the American economists I know are on the left politically. So are most of the non-American economists I know. There are, of course, prominent exceptions to the rule. - I don't know why we are accused of having no theory of prices? I teach that in week 2 of my principles of microeconomics class. I don't teach inflation b/c I don't teach macro, but they do have theories. - We don't assume people have perfect information, with the possible exception of using it as a very simple benchmark case on our way to something more complicated and realistic. Incomplete/imperfect information has been a central feature of all theoretical and empirical work in the profession for more than 40 years now. - He shares a post about concentration in meatpacking. I agree that we have allowed many markets to become too concentrated, including meatpacking! I am in favor of stronger antitrust enforcement! My entire sub-field is empirical studies of imperfectly competitive industries. - Skipping several tweets (there is really too much here to argue with every point...) we have talked about the CORE textbook in my department. Most of us put it on our syllabi. It is free, after all. As a comment on Doctorow's take: every Principles textbook mentions the environment because every Principles textbook talks about externalities. I spend a week on the subject. Again, I confirm my impression that he doesn't know anything about economics or competition policy, but studying it more seriously would be to his benefit, especially in commenting on technology and regulation issues.

Nasrudith 5y ago
Perhaps theory of prices has a totally different meaning from "leftist" contexts? They operate under imperatives and assume there is some sort of ideal formulae that ignores that it makes the Knapsack Problem look log(n). "What the market will bear." is a nonanswer to them even though it is accurate because reality is messy with human psychology more so. Of course from mainstream economics perspective their concepts of value and exploitation are between fallacious (universal global value because labor is assumed as the basis) to pants-on-head levels of crazy (the idea that a fair trasaction becomes unfair when the buyer is able to reap later profit).

Nasrudith 5y ago

Perhaps theory of prices has a totally different meaning from "leftist" contexts? They operate under imperatives and assume there is some sort of ideal formulae that ignores that it makes the Knapsack Problem look log(n). "What the market will bear." is a nonanswer to them even though it is accurate because reality is messy with human psychology more so. Of course from mainstream economics perspective their concepts of value and exploitation are between fallacious (universal global value because labor is assumed as the basis) to pants-on-head levels of crazy (the idea that a fair trasaction becomes unfair when the buyer is able to reap later profit).