Økonomi er ingen vitenskap

Oslo børs, en kvasivitenskapens katedral. Foto: Valugi

In her book Econned, Yves Smith describes how the arrogance of economists has led to a very biased view of the world:

“…they assume that only they are qualified to opine about matters economic. That in turn produces two considerable biases. First, if an argument about economics comes from a non-economist and does not happen to fall in line with the orthodoxy, it must be wrong. It will be rejected even if it contains useful information. Secondly, the scientific mantle gives economists the trump card in policy discussions, even though, as we have seen (elsewhere in her book – BD) those aspirations are not born out in practice.

“When an elite succeeds in monopolising discussion on a given topic, an additional danger is that members of the privileged caste can become overconfident. The economics discipline has had, in fact, attacks of hubris.” (Yves Smith, Econned Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 p62-63).

As Yves Smith makes clear, the status and power of economics and economists is connected to its claim to be a social science. So let’s be clear…..it is no such thing.

What is currently taught as economics cannot possibly be described either as a science or even, for that matter, as a study of society. I make that assertion because the track record of economists in prediction is so poor that it is laughable for them to claim scientific status. This failure of predictive power has been pointed out over and again – particularly after the failure of the bulk of the economics profession to predict the collapse of 2007/8.

Les resten av artikkelen: Economics is not a social science