Canary in the Coal Mine - Day

4:51PM - toxictextbooks.com (postautistic economics)

Toxic textbooks helped cause the current economic meltdown. It did not result from natural causes or human conspiracy, but because society at all levels became infected with false beliefs regarding the nature of economic reality. And the primary sources of this infection are the “neoclassical” or “mainstream” textbooks long used in introductory economics courses in universities throughout the world.

Every year these “mainstream” books serve to indoctrinate millions of students in a quaint ideology (perfect rationality of economic agents, market efficiency, the invisible hand, etc.) cunningly disguised as science. This mass miseducation deprives society of the moral and intellectual capacities it needs in order to design and maintain the support systems required by market economies.

— www.toxictextbooks.com

6:56PM

A defining characteristic of traditional or orthodox economics is that it subscribes to a Neo-Platonist theory of truth, i.e., it holds its basic tenets or propositions from which it then deduces everything else, to be self-evident. (..) At no point do they allude to how these basic principles were discovered. No names, no dates and no processes of discovery are mentioned. Instead [Mankiw's textbook] seeks, by appeal to folksy stories to persuade the student to accept them on faith. Only a confirmed Neo-Platonist or a snake oil salesman would think to begin an epistemological exercise that way. (..) All this will be done without a single mention, let alone discussion, of ethical lenses other than Utilitarianism through which one might view economic reality. The students will not even be told that they are being introduced into an ethical system of thought. (..) Most likely the student will not even know that rationality is a normative concept. Nor is the student apt to have any general views to offer in opposition. (..) Unfortunately, among economists the obvious needs to be emphasized: not everyone is a Utilitarian. Not everyone believes that the maximization of individual “utility”, whatever that might be, is or should be the goal of human and hence economic life. “Economists have no right to select one ethics as the ‘correct one’ for purposes of economic analysis.” [Söderbaum, 2004, p. 162] But they do, and in doing so go about as far away from the scientific as it is possible to go. (..) [Mankiw] is quite right in assuming that the student will not notice his previous chapter’s display of Neo-Platonism nor know that it is anti-science. (..) This self-exaltation has in the main enabled its anti-scientific methodology to escape outside notice, with the result that the broader intellectual community has accepted economics’ self-assessment. Bouchaud does not like to mince words:

Most of all, there is a crucial need to change the mindset of those working in economics and financial engineering. They need to move away from what Richard Feynman called Cargo Cult Science: a science that follows all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, while still missing something essential. An overly formal and dogmatic education in the economic sciences and financial mathematics are part of the problem. (..) The prerequisites for more stability in the long run are the development of a more pragmatic and realistic representation of what is going on in financial markets, and to focus on data, which should always supersede perfect equations and aesthetic axioms. [Bouchaud, 2008, p. 292]

— Edward Fullbrook, Toxic Textbooks

7:28PM

Eleven ways to think like a post-crash economist:

1. Don’t try to pass yourself off as a kissing cousin of natural scientists.
2. Don’t speak, except to very small children, of invisible hands and magic.
3. When possible avoid the use of emotive words.
4. Remind yourself every morning that your duty as a teacher is to educate your students, not indoctrinate them.
5. Try to look at economic phenomena from different points of view and teach your students to do the same.
6. Encourage diversity of conceptual frameworks in economic research.
7. Don’t be condescending to your students.
8. Keep your eye on real-world economies rather than imaginary ones.
9. Don’t try to hide the troubled but fascinating history and contemporary diversity of economics from your students and the general public.
10. Avoid cranks and try to avoid becoming one yourself.
11. Never try to pass off ideology as objective truth.