I've been focusing on the economics of climate change for over four years now, because it's the most pressing problem facing humanity, and because economists have done such a god-awful job on it—fooling themselves into regarding an existential threat as a minor cost-benefit problem (Keen 2020; Keen et al. 2022).
Professor, while I do not bite on everything that you put forth, I very much appreciate your rejection of the Withered Old Schools of Economics. I also very much appreciate your dynamic systems approach. However, color me skeptical that a true mathematical model can be constructed to describe our economy in such a way as to be meaningful (actually able to produce a consistent, useable product). Because economics is culture and therefore a human construct - how in the world can we mathematically model a single human being much less almost 8 billion of us acting in concert across time? That, I think, is where the Austrians approach economics from the rock of reality: economics is the study of Gross Human Action. It is a social science, not a mathematical one. The appropriate models are philosophical models; grand and sweeping assumptions that are true enough often enough to assist us poor, ignorant peasants in making decisions as we meander through a chaotic and unknowable world. Not unlike Stoicism or Buddhism or Christianity or Newtonian Physics. I think the fault of most economic models is to over-reach and over-simplify our world. Reductionism at its finest - and yielding no synthesis bearing any edible fruit. Even the Austrians. I think we assign too much agency to one factor or another in the grand attempt at an economic Theory of Everything (or The One Ring to Rule Them All). But, then again, I am merely a peasant. A very skeptical but enthusiastic student grasping for answers in a world where only questions exist. In any case, thank you very much for what you do. And thank you for making the thoughts flow (this is by far the best part : cogito - ergo sum).
Professor, while I do not bite on everything that you put forth, I very much appreciate your rejection of the Withered Old Schools of Economics. I also very much appreciate your dynamic systems approach. However, color me skeptical that a true mathematical model can be constructed to describe our economy in such a way as to be meaningful (actually able to produce a consistent, useable product). Because economics is culture and therefore a human construct - how in the world can we mathematically model a single human being much less almost 8 billion of us acting in concert across time? That, I think, is where the Austrians approach economics from the rock of reality: economics is the study of Gross Human Action. It is a social science, not a mathematical one. The appropriate models are philosophical models; grand and sweeping assumptions that are true enough often enough to assist us poor, ignorant peasants in making decisions as we meander through a chaotic and unknowable world. Not unlike Stoicism or Buddhism or Christianity or Newtonian Physics. I think the fault of most economic models is to over-reach and over-simplify our world. Reductionism at its finest - and yielding no synthesis bearing any edible fruit. Even the Austrians. I think we assign too much agency to one factor or another in the grand attempt at an economic Theory of Everything (or The One Ring to Rule Them All). But, then again, I am merely a peasant. A very skeptical but enthusiastic student grasping for answers in a world where only questions exist. In any case, thank you very much for what you do. And thank you for making the thoughts flow (this is by far the best part : cogito - ergo sum).