Sadly, yes. It’s plagued by externalities, the replicability crisis and a narrow minded neoliberal paradigm. It suffers from it’s own dogma, austrians especially. Deregulation is a key focus of austrian economics and its penispolishers despite the overwhelming dangers it presents. Instead of obvious corrections to identify safe limits between catastrophic deregulation and strangling over regulation they just spew the dogma and ignore the tragedy. Being co-opted by the fascists isn’t helping.
I was trained as an ecologist, and when I started digging into economics from Smith, Malthus, Keynes, Ricardo and Veblen I could start to see the mindset and could appreciate the insight an early incomplete nascent understanding of the field could bring.
When I started following modern economics it felt less illuminating and more tortured. Conclusions were wrong and dangerous things were being said. Stupid things were being held as truths. The reductionist view of translating everything into dollars and GDP without measuring the impacts of events and policies on systems, the people in them and the environment. The deliberate ignorance for economics refusing to adapt to advances in other disciplines. It’s as siloed an ivory tower as it gets.
When you can say the economic consequences of climate change can be mitigated by moving everything to airconditioned indoors for 5% of GDP and get a “Nobel” Prize, well, it puts the entire field in disrepute.
Okay, good. I asked because most people that say this definitely haven’t. You have to appreciate that, independent of what it’s used for, they can replicate certain things about the real economy with pretty remarkable precision.
The deliberate ignorance for economics refusing to adapt to advances in other disciplines.
Do you have something in specific you’re thinking of? As far as I can tell the nakedcapitalism example takes issue with the heuristic Nordhaus uses, but it’s not actually inconsistent with climate science, as opposed to just very simple.
Do you have something in specific you’re thinking of?
Yes the Steve Keen link I suplied for one. ~ “Don’t study economics, study system dynamics then apply yourself to your curiosities.”
Also in the other link, when MIT came up with World3 model, the scientists were excited thinking economists were going to love this new development. They were shocked to see it rejected, because it didn’t fit the dogma, and definitely didn’t help anyone get rich. That was 1972. Here we are in 2025 facing multiple existential crises and economists are still spouting limitless bullshit about endless potential of human ingenuity, and economic substitution will progress endlessly. They are allergic to limits. Only economists and mathematicians believe in infinites, and only mathematicians are right because they study in a bubble of theory unbound by reality.
A stolen joke reappropriated:
Mathematicians build castles in the sky. Economists move into them. Capitalists collect the rent.
As far as I can tell the nakedcapitalism example takes issue with the heuristic Nordhaus uses, but it’s not actually inconsistent with climate science, as opposed to just very simple.
Nordhause’s recomendations to the IPCC are catastrophically wrong.
4°C optimal you say? At least 40% decline in agriculture. Incomprehensible loss of biodiversity risking catastrophic collapse of keystone species, like pollinators. Deaths of billions directly due to climate extremes and more due to geopolitical conflict. The likelyhood of non-anthropogenic emissions taking off due to tipping points that mean that stopping human emissions at 4C means nothing in terms of stopping warming as natural sources of GHG will dwarf anything we ever did. The warming will continue until a new equillibrium is found. How many humans on earth, eeking out a meek existence near the arctic then? Strange use of the word “optimal”.
Calling Nordhause “very simple” is like calling a medical researcher who moved the recomended dose of daily dietary lead 4 decimal places over. Tee hee, ooops! *giggle.
His recomendations to the IPCC are ringing a death bell. It’s the kind of thinking a rich man of priviledge gives to his rich buddies as a farwell dick suck because he will be dead of natural causes before the consequences knock on his door.
I mean, you had to know I wasn’t going to read the long article and watch an hour and a half of video because you said it’s articulate. And that’s not unreasonable. The first video is just generic life advice.
I’m not doing PR for Nordhause, so I’ll just say okay to the rest. Most economists don’t seriously think 4C sounds fine. Many of them enjoy coral reefs, even.
Have you actually read much (real, contemporary, so not this) economics?
Sadly, yes. It’s plagued by externalities, the replicability crisis and a narrow minded neoliberal paradigm. It suffers from it’s own dogma, austrians especially. Deregulation is a key focus of austrian economics and its penispolishers despite the overwhelming dangers it presents. Instead of obvious corrections to identify safe limits between catastrophic deregulation and strangling over regulation they just spew the dogma and ignore the tragedy. Being co-opted by the fascists isn’t helping.
I was trained as an ecologist, and when I started digging into economics from Smith, Malthus, Keynes, Ricardo and Veblen I could start to see the mindset and could appreciate the insight an early incomplete nascent understanding of the field could bring.
When I started following modern economics it felt less illuminating and more tortured. Conclusions were wrong and dangerous things were being said. Stupid things were being held as truths. The reductionist view of translating everything into dollars and GDP without measuring the impacts of events and policies on systems, the people in them and the environment. The deliberate ignorance for economics refusing to adapt to advances in other disciplines. It’s as siloed an ivory tower as it gets.
When you can say the economic consequences of climate change can be mitigated by moving everything to airconditioned indoors for 5% of GDP and get a “Nobel” Prize, well, it puts the entire field in disrepute.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/the-cost-of-climate-change.html
Steve Keen says it better than I ever could.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mFgXz0R5k98
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMWSkzrMYg
Okay, good. I asked because most people that say this definitely haven’t. You have to appreciate that, independent of what it’s used for, they can replicate certain things about the real economy with pretty remarkable precision.
Do you have something in specific you’re thinking of? As far as I can tell the nakedcapitalism example takes issue with the heuristic Nordhaus uses, but it’s not actually inconsistent with climate science, as opposed to just very simple.
Do you have something in specific you’re thinking of?
Yes the Steve Keen link I suplied for one. ~ “Don’t study economics, study system dynamics then apply yourself to your curiosities.”
Also in the other link, when MIT came up with World3 model, the scientists were excited thinking economists were going to love this new development. They were shocked to see it rejected, because it didn’t fit the dogma, and definitely didn’t help anyone get rich. That was 1972. Here we are in 2025 facing multiple existential crises and economists are still spouting limitless bullshit about endless potential of human ingenuity, and economic substitution will progress endlessly. They are allergic to limits. Only economists and mathematicians believe in infinites, and only mathematicians are right because they study in a bubble of theory unbound by reality.
A stolen joke reappropriated:
Mathematicians build castles in the sky. Economists move into them. Capitalists collect the rent.
Nordhause’s recomendations to the IPCC are catastrophically wrong.
https://theconversation.com/4-c-of-global-warming-is-optimal-even-nobel-prize-winners-are-getting-things-catastrophically-wrong-125802
4°C optimal you say? At least 40% decline in agriculture. Incomprehensible loss of biodiversity risking catastrophic collapse of keystone species, like pollinators. Deaths of billions directly due to climate extremes and more due to geopolitical conflict. The likelyhood of non-anthropogenic emissions taking off due to tipping points that mean that stopping human emissions at 4C means nothing in terms of stopping warming as natural sources of GHG will dwarf anything we ever did. The warming will continue until a new equillibrium is found. How many humans on earth, eeking out a meek existence near the arctic then? Strange use of the word “optimal”.
Calling Nordhause “very simple” is like calling a medical researcher who moved the recomended dose of daily dietary lead 4 decimal places over. Tee hee, ooops! *giggle.
His recomendations to the IPCC are ringing a death bell. It’s the kind of thinking a rich man of priviledge gives to his rich buddies as a farwell dick suck because he will be dead of natural causes before the consequences knock on his door.
He is an intellectual fraud.
I mean, you had to know I wasn’t going to read the long article and watch an hour and a half of video because you said it’s articulate. And that’s not unreasonable. The first video is just generic life advice.
I’m not doing PR for Nordhause, so I’ll just say okay to the rest. Most economists don’t seriously think 4C sounds fine. Many of them enjoy coral reefs, even.