Having just finished my first semester of graduate school in economics, I find myself confirming some of my skepticisms about the the economics profession. The mainstream treatment of economics - the study of human choice - is set in the world of mathematics and statistics, mostly devoid of…
I tell all my friends:
You won’t like how this ends
Shackin up is whack enough
Starts out fun but soon gets rough
Cuz you’ll end up either homeless or married
And both of those options scare me.
I dissect some of the problems with empiricism in this letter to a professor:
I’ve read a bit more about the Austrian method, and have a slightly better grasp on the differences. It’s true that its claims are not falsifiable via empirical testing; but that is simply due to the nature of economic claims, none of which are quantitative. For example, the claim that human beings employ means to achieve ends (i.e. act purposefully) is not falsifiable, but it is nevertheless true. The rest of economic law is logically deduced from this main axiom of action.
The merit that I see in this method of apriorism is that it logically limits our interpretation of historical events. Empiricism’s claims, on the other hand, can never be ultimately proven or unproven, verified or rejected. And since there are no a priori statements about the nature of human action, a Keynesian can look at data from the 1930’s and say we didn’t have enough deficit spending, and that once we ran up the deficits we got out of the Depression, while a non-Keynesian can look at the exact same data and say that the Hoover deficits were the highest peacetime deficits in our country’s history, and that after the war we went from a massive deficit to a small surplus, yet growth remained strong.
It just seems to me that without a theoretical understanding of the nature of market events grounded in statements that are necessarily true, this type of back-and-forth can never be satisfactorily resolved. Even the macro professor at the UVA open house said something to the effect of, “We are re-writing our macro books and they should be ready by the time you guys start choosing field specialities.” I think statistical testing has its place, but only as a tool to gauge whether or not certain causal events transpired in the past. The effects of these events, I think, must be deduced logically from the action axiom.
If you’d like to learn more about this, I highly recommend Hans Hoppe’s Economic Science and the Austrian Method.
From my buddy Jon R.
“just bought a nice schwinn road bike for $40! chicago made, candy blue ladies bike from the 70s.”
Response:
It’s good to hear that you have a couples ladies in the stable.
Heed the words of mister Hackman’s fable:
Don’t get attached and give them each a label,
Take ‘em in, Get ‘em out, and take your money off the table.
Sitting here with Matt, Rooney, and Laurel;
Debating what is right and what is moral.
It seems that Rooney ate a pair of Laurel’s drawers,
And now Matt must make a trip to the stores,
And we must close all of our doors,
So Rooney won’t make chores whenever Matt scores.
Up late. Can’t sleep. So i thought I’d write a poem.
The meter won’t matter and the rhyme may roam,
But that’s ok ‘cuz it’s meant to be spoken (And you cannot fix a poem that ain’t broken).
Now that you are sure this message won’t misfire,
Allow me to say something to inspire:
A man will live by only his own code
Of lessons he’s learned while building his road.
You might say that his life is a trial,
Each act kept in a large evidence file.
So that one day he can be brought to court,
To be tried against his law for his tort.
Well I wonder who is truly on trial?
Man by his code? Or man’s code by his file?
Man defends himself by reasoning with the jury:
“My road was built by my code so I will not worry.
I have nothing to hide about which I am sorry.
So convict me of your worst but you better hurry
‘Cuz I will not hang my head low and obey the court.
I will forge on much harder, I will never abort!”
The jury comes back quicker than man has time to blink:
“We don’t want to cause a scene or to make a big stink,
So we find man not guilty of all charges (wink wink).
Because we can never limit Man’s freedom to think.”
