Isolated, Insulated, Intellectually Inert

blucey · 01-02-2014 9:36am #1

And thats just me

What do Irish economists think and teach? : wp.me/p1xJaL-12Y
Its not a pretty picture folks.

blucey · 01-02-2014 9:37am

BTW - the slide show with commentary while long and bulky does give my fivepence worth in more detail

KyussBishop · 01-02-2014 1:22pm

That is an interesting read - full link here:
https://brianmlucey.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/what-do-irish-economists-think-and-teach/

I've not studied economics in college, but I've been learning it in my own time, starting from the perspective of everything that's wrong with it; what economics graduates learn in Ireland, judging by that, seems heavily disconnected from how economies work in reality, and there seem to be institutionalized/indoctrinated attitudes within academia, that aim to promote ignorance among graduates (such as the impression among graduates, that economists shouldn't settle fundamental theoretical disagreements, before offering proscriptions - and the idea that it is anywhere near being a real science); doesn't mean the academics spreading those attitudes are self-aware/conscious of it mind.

Suspicion of accounting, in particular, I immediately find very odd - since even the briefest knowledge of the accounting of the monetary system, upends most traditional economic views, and things like DSGE.

romperstomper · 03-02-2014 2:35am

can someone link me to the post that got prof brian lucy banned?

thanks

KyussBishop · 03-02-2014 9:15am

Ah didn't know that was Brian Lucey himself. Here's the blog post, if that's what you meant:
https://brianmlucey.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/what-do-irish-economists-think-and-teach/

The thread that existed is deleted; here's my post from it in any case:

KyussBishop wrote:

That is an interesting read - full link here:
https://brianmlucey.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/what-do-irish-economists-think-and-teach/

I've not studied economics in college, but I've been learning it in my own time, starting from the perspective of everything that's wrong with it; what economics graduates learn in Ireland, judging by that, seems heavily disconnected from how economies work in reality, and there seem to be institutionalized/indoctrinated attitudes within academia, that aim to promote ignorance among graduates (such as the impression among graduates, that economists shouldn't settle fundamental theoretical disagreements, before offering proscriptions - and the idea that it is anywhere near being a real science); doesn't mean the academics spreading those attitudes are self-aware/conscious of it mind.

Suspicion of accounting, in particular, I immediately find very odd - since even the briefest knowledge of the accounting of the monetary system, upends most traditional economic views, and things like DSGE.

It's a good study and a worthwhile topic in my view - it's not like some random person putting their opinion onto a blog or anything, it's an actual proper study (note that Stephen Kinsella jointly performed the study).

I think the ban though was just a misunderstanding, with Brian not being aware of the rules - hopefully it can be resolved.

dlouth15 · 03-02-2014 10:54am

He comments on the ban on his blog here.

Boards.ie, and debate. Not natural bedfellows it seems
Posted on February 2, 2014 by brianmlucey

So, thousands of views for the post on what Irish economists think and teach. Which is nice

As part of getting the debate going, I posted some links to this in relevant fora (postgraduates, Economics) on Boards.ie. They banned me. For spam

Riiight. Coz, I need to spam Boards.ie.

Also in response to a blog comment:

Well, if they cant distinguish between spam and three different but related posts from a long time poster, and if they are so up their own fundamental as not to bother with an email going “hey, we put these in limbo, can you reassure us your a human?” then it says something.
I do not take well to park keeper peaked cap syndrome little bureaucrats. I have zero to apologise for so I wont be doing so. Call me stubborn but thats me. A simple email would work to check this. Instead… BOOM. Plus what is this with the Gulag Rules – you know them when you break them? Again, lads, get a frikkin life.
My impression is of a bunch of ComicBookGuys sitting surrounded by soda and chips in a room, hur huring like Beavis and Butthead.

KyussBishop · 05-02-2014 10:15pm

Following on from the topic Brian's original post is about, a good article here, on how the way economics is taught and practiced now, is more about:

...“whether a fact or development is significant depends primarily on its relevance to current economic theory.”...Whether the real world matters depends presumably on “its relevance to current economic theory.”

"Why rigour is such a poor substitute for relevance"
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/why-rigour-is-such-a-poor-substitute-for-relevance/

It's a set of problems that have plagued economics for well over [latex]3\over4[/latex] of a century now, and it doesn't seem to show any signs of changing - I don't fully understand myself, how economic academia can remain in such a poor state intellectually for so long.

There are viable solutions to most of the problems inherent in mainstream economics, and they largely come from the Post-Keynesian crowd - but this seems to get discounted, primarily because it's 'not relevant to mainstream economic theory' - much like the same way reality isn't relevant to mainstream economic theory (and Post-Keynesian theory seems to much better fit reality - starting with getting the monetary system described accurately).

What can actually be done to resolve this though? Many of the same problems and solutions with economics, were raised in the 1930's (full-on 80 years ago), only to be largely forgotten about over the course of WWII, with more prominent (but quite muffled) discussion once again today - how is economic academia going to be reformed, to prevent this same stagnation continuing long-term through the 21st century?

andrew · 07-02-2014 7:19pm

Oi vey. Thread un-deleted. The original posts were of a very similar format and posted in the same manner as the mountains of spam posts which boards get each day, so it was summarily deleted by an admin and a ban handed out. No effort is made to contact people who post in this way, since 99% of the time it's a spammer.

As a general note, when starting a thread people should make sure that their post contains some kind of discussion; it goes a long way to proving that you're not a spammer/robot.

ezra_ · 09-02-2014 9:59pm

Not good enough Andrew, it seems. Herr Professor Lucey demands written apologies!

Pity, as the work done by the authors is informative and would seem to show a profession in denial and decline. The continued focus on DSGE is just frankly worrying.

Looking at Kinsella's stock flow work, it seems that he is least trying to take the assumptions out of macro. Are there many other people doing similar work?

KyussBishop · 09-02-2014 11:14pm

ezra_ wrote: »

Not good enough Andrew, it seems. Herr Professor Lucey demands written apologies!

Pity, as the work done by the authors is informative and would seem to show a profession in denial and decline. The continued focus on DSGE is just frankly worrying.

Looking at Kinsella's stock flow work, it seems that he is least trying to take the assumptions out of macro. Are there many other people doing similar work?

Modern Monetary Theory has pretty much rewritten macroeconomics, built almost entirely upon stock-flow consistent accounting of the monetary system (that, accounting identities - making sure the numbers add up consistently - is literally the base of the entire theory; up to the point, that it was a mistake to name it a 'theory', as most of it is just basic accounting identities that are mathematically true).

Its description of macroeconomics is pretty much bang on, but there's still debate about its proscriptions (of what to do) built upon that knowledge.

Steve Keen is also a Post-Keynesian (a school I believe Stephen Kinsella ascribes to - MMT is also a part of this school), who is working on an economic modelling program called Minsky, where the very core concept of the program, is enforcing stock-flow consistent modelling of the monetary system, using Godley Tables (basically just an accounting balancing sheet, making sure assets and liabilities sum to 0).

Steve Keen is among a small number of economists who predicted the economic crisis before it happened, and is also the only one to actually model it before it happened - he's been trying to push for economics reform for almost 40 years.

Really puts the mention, in Brian Lucey's blog post, of economic graduates suspicion of accounting, into perspective

In my opinion, those among the Post-Keynesian school have pretty much done as you say: They've taken the assumptions out of macroeconomics, and have described and built models which stand up to empirical scrutiny, better than any other models/theories - if any group is going to bring economics closer to being a science, it will be them.

KyussBishop · 17-02-2014 10:07am

Michael Hudson, an MMT economist, has done an interview on Ireland, with an Irish independent journalism website Melting Press - he has a good section on how economic theory in academia is controlled:

http://www.meltingpress.com/alternative-voices-ep-1-professor-michael-hudson/ (audio in link as well)

G: We all know that you’re an independent economist, you offer a different point of view, but one thing that was really striking during the Celtic Tiger here was that the entire profession of economists completely bought into the ridiculously flawed neoclassical models. Can you talk about how the profession of economists played their role in building all this up?

Prof. H: They’re indoctrinated. There are two ways the Chicago School of economics pushed neoliberal theories. In Chile, they went down under the Pinochet regime and closed every economics department in the country that didn’t teach their Chicago School theories. They assassinated labor leaders, they assassinated economists and professors, and had a continent wide terrorism campaign, Operation Condor, which killed tens of thousands of intellectuals. They didn’t have to do that in Ireland or America.

In American they gained control of the main refereed economic journals. And that means that in the United States – and probably Ireland and Europe too – when you graduate with your PhD and want to go into teaching, you have to get promoted by being published in arefereed journal. But the referees are Chicago boys or Harvard neoliberals. They are ideological totalitarians. The free market boys realize that you cannot have a free market without having utter totalitarian control. That’s what they’ve achieved.

The aim of totalitarian control is to make sure that there is no alternative. So by the time I graduated from NYU, I was told – by a professor who worked for the CIA – that it was not worth while studying the history of economic thought, because if economic theories were good, they would have succeeded by Survival of the Fittest. If they weren’t taught, it’s because they were outdated and obsolete. So, in the United States they’ve dropped the history of economic thought from the academic curriculum. They’ve even dropped economic history. So you’re not going to learn what was taught when I was in school 50 years ago: the history of rent theory, price and value theory.

The whole edifice of analysing the distinction between earned and unearned income, economic rent and profit – all this has been stripped away from the curriculum and does not appear in the economic journals. So, what you really have in academic economics is junk economics. I think you’ve had Steve Keen on your show and he’s written a book, Debunking Economics, explaining much about that. I’ve written on similar lines on international trade theory.

G: Yeah, it’s interesting that you mention Latin American Michael. In the last twenty years or so we’ve seen a huge backlash to the, as you said, extremely violent neoliberal projects implemented there. Do you this it’s possible that through similar grass-roots movements here in Europe that something similar could take place.

Prof. H: If you’ve read the newspapers recently the US has just gone in to the Ukraine and has assassination squads murdering Ukrainian judges and leaders that do not want to push Ukraine along the neoliberal pro-European, as opposed to Russian practices. So, yeah, they only kill when they actually have to, and when people actually listen to them.

I don’t think anybody is listening to them in Ireland and I don’t hear any discussion there, so I don’t think there’s any need for violence there, because there’s a herd instinct there as you say, with Stockholm syndrome. You’ve adopted the view of your oppressors, as if somehow they’ll be nice to you, if you’ll only give more money to them. You may need another 60% of your population to emigrate before you realize there may be an alternative.

...

G: You’re absolutely correct. Can you explain to the listeners Michael, we all know how visible the financial lobby is in the United States. I mean it’s completely transparent that the politicians there are bought, but in Europe it’s seen slightly more obfuscated. How does the lobbying work in Europe?

Prof. H: Largely through the educational system. I’ve met people in Latvia, Iceland and other countries who honestly believe the neoliberal line, because that’s the only economics they’ve been exposed to. The neoliberals realize that the way to make sure that There Is No Alternative is to make sure that people don’t know that there is one. What you have is Junk history, teaching Junk economics so that people think that the world has always been this way, and that there isn’t any other way of doing things. Of course, that’s crazy – but that’s what’s happening!

...

G: Is there anyone you see, there’s obviously yourself, maybe people like Richard Wolff and David Harvey. Who else in the economic profession do you think is speaking the truth?

Prof. H: The ones you mentioned certainly, I had dinner with David Harvey the other night. Steve Keen, Dirk Bezemer in Holland, Yanis Varoufakis writing about Greece, and Michael Perelman here in the US. None of us are funded by an organization that is putting together an alternative national income account, banking or financial accounts. And we can’t spend our life as key punch operators. We thought there would be a self interest among debtors to back our analysis just like Keynes’ analysis was backed in the 1920s. But there aren’t any. There seems to be such a dispirited, depressive feeling among debtors there is very little we can do besides talk to people like you and other sites and write our books.

Obviously that is a heavily personal point of view, which I don't necessarily adapt all myself (very hyperbolic at parts - certainly one of the more scathing viewpoints I've read on the EU, in some unquoted bits), but which rings true with a lot of what I've read in general, on the institutional corruption of economic teaching.

He takes a lot of what is known about what is wrong with economic teaching, and looks at it from a very cynical stance - I've not really considered the point of view he has put forward in detail before, so that's not currently how I look at it myself, but given how central, control over dominant economic thought, is a key part of US foreign policy still, I can't really say that the cynicism is unreasonable or unwarranted.

andrew · 17-02-2014 10:43am

KyussBishop wrote: »

Michael Hudson, an MMT economist, has done an interview on Ireland, with an Irish independent journalism website Melting Press - he has a good section on how economic theory in academia is controlled:

http://www.meltingpress.com/alternative-voices-ep-1-professor-michael-hudson/ (audio in link as well)

Obviously that is a heavily personal point of view, which I don't necessarily adapt all myself (very hyperbolic at parts - certainly one of the more scathing viewpoints I've read on the EU, in some unquoted bits), but which rings true with a lot of what I've read in general, on the institutional corruption of economic teaching.

He takes a lot of what is known about what is wrong with economic teaching, and looks at it from a very cynical stance - I've not really considered the point of view he has put forward in detail before, so that's not currently how I look at it myself, but given how central, control over dominant economic thought, is a key part of US foreign policy still, I can't really say that the cynicism is unreasonable or unwarranted.

He sounds quite uh...extreme.

I can see where he's coming from in his point about economic history. I took an economic history module in my final year, and it was excellent, rediculously good and interesting. It really tied a lot of things together, and I think the models you learn in other courses make a lot more sense, when you can put them into context.

It's not a subject that has much of an emphasis placed on it, which is a a shame. I know that at a postgrad level, so much of an emphasis is placed upon technical skills that you're not going to get exposed to economic history unless you explicitly do a masters/Phd in it. So many people go into doing Economics postgrads striaght from Maths or other numerate degrees, that I think it'd be worth having 'softer' more general courses at a postgrad level too, so as to provide a more rounded view of the subject.

KyussBishop · 17-02-2014 11:08pm

Yes, maybe I paint him as being a bit extreme there, heh (and well, his views portrayed there are extreme - though with merit) - I've read/watched a decent number of interviews of him, and he is usually far less extreme than that, but that is the first I've read of him being interviewed on that particular topic, of economic political ideology (particularly neoliberalism), so guess I can understand the rather more extreme views on that.

I don't have any first-hand knowledge of Economic teaching in Ireland at all, but yes, I agree with you there that economic history definitely should have a much greater emphasis in teaching - it's a pretty fascinating topic too really, which would go much further towards actually holding onto and fostering peoples interest in economics, as well as providing the historical context needed, to see the ideological slant in a lot of economics.

I mentioned it in passing in the Tax Anticipation Notes thread, but John Kenneth Galbraith's 'Age of Uncertainty' documentary on economic history, is among the best documentaries I've seen, of any topic/variety: (can get all of the episodes on YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGSID_Uyw7w

KyussBishop · 23-04-2014 9:51pm

There is an excellent new report pushing for economic reform, from a group new to me, the 'Post-Crash Economics Society':
http://www.post-crasheconomics.com/economics-education-and-unlearning/

This time, it deals with the academic situation within the UK - its overview of the problem with teaching in economics, is extremely good, and it's worth a read.

Tom Healy, an author with the Irish NERI institute (very good site/blog), also put out an article recently which touched on the need for reform:
http://www.nerinstitute.net/blog/2014/04/20/doing-learning-and-teaching-political-economy/

Isolated, Insulated, Intellectually Inert

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