9 Comments
May 31, 2023Liked by Josh Drummond

Ah yes! The old "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Why are you looking at me?? Why are you looking at me?? Don't look at me! Stop looking at me!!!"

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Josh, if you're up for a laugh, you'd have loved the press release that led to this recent topic of sticky-shoe-gunk - https://www.newsroom.co.nz/fringe-economics-like-homeopathy-needs-a-dose-of-reality.

Economists, it turns out, are extremely concerned that some people are talking about 'other ways' we might prosper on this planet... because (poor diddum's) it's actually fucking hard to measure 'good' when all you're prepared to work with is an Excel spreadsheet.

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I wasn't sure whether to put my head in my hands or bang it against a brick wall reading that.

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Why not both?

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I’m so sick of economists and their outsized influence coupled with their limited ability to make any sense of anything other than screwing the masses out of more hard earned cash and shoveling it to the billionaires. That surely must be their ultimate job description cause it ain’t “accurate predictions / modeling of the economic system” or anything that goes towards addressing the massive injustice and inequity their BS has caused. Keep pointing out their utter failings and uselessness, Josh, maybe just maybe there will be some consequence for being so wrong at all times. I won’t hold my breath tho, cause there’s still some blood left to wring out of this planet and its poor.

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It’s burned my brain trying to work out how the answer to a problem caused by the profiteering of the rich is making people with tight budgets squeeze them even harder.

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Thanks for this post Josh. Agree wholeheartedly with your views. This quote from a book by George F Demartino named The Tragic Science is one of many that would fit in this post and would most definitely apply to us even though it is written for a US audience. " Economists do not and can not possibly know all they need to know to design interventions that avoid unanticipated consequences. The unforeseen consequences of economic interventions can be benign and even beneficial. But they are often damaging."

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I feel the need to point out that distinctions should be made between micro and macro. We know how some stuff works in micro. Quite a lot actually. And there's consensus across the field. Some of those translate to macro. But the vast majority of macro has wildly opposed factions with no consensus on theories of anything.

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And we still haven’t seen the delayed effects of the rabid inflation from a year ago. Look at the fertiliser price increases coupled with the fuel price (I know as I had to foot the bill for my meagre 11 acres of pasture... it was pretty much triple from the last time I did fert in 2020).

It’s the vibe. It’s Mabo.

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