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The economy just doesn’t make sense anymore
- PaulHoule 4y agoIt is normal that economic indicators are contradictory when there is an economic crisis. Part of it (pointed out by John Kenneth Galbraith years ago) is that economic growth is basically linear and can be described by https://mathinsight.org/exponential_growth_decay_differential_equation_refresher https://mathinsight.org/exponential_growth_decay_differentia... but that business failures are essential nonlinear and characterized by defaults that happen as discrete failures... as Hemingway put it, "gradually and then suddenly"
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoIs there any evidence that any economist who has ever lived has ever been able to make sense of the economy in any repeatable way? It seems to this informed novice that economists more closely resemble leaders of religious sects, each with their own religious texts, belief systems, omens and portents, and ritualistic acts. You have warring tribes, each as unable to predict or manage as the next, with competing bibles and prophets, utterly and truly convinced that their path is the One True Understanding of god and his plan. Regardless of their sect, their prognostications seem about as accurate as hallucinogen-induced prophetic vision and their influence seems outsized compared to the accuracy of their foresight. And it seems that the best course of action regarding the economy and its health would be to pay as much attention to economists as one would Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, or Keith Raniere and just let it get on with itself.