A New Way to Learn Economics (newyorker.com) 297
John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker: With the new school year starting, there is good news for incoming students of economics -- and anybody else who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change. A group of economists from both sides of the Atlantic, part of a project called CORE Econ, has put together a new introductory economics curriculum, one that is modern, comprehensive, and freely available online. In this country, many colleges encourage Econ 101 students to buy (or rent) expensive textbooks, which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more for some hardcover editions. The project is a collaborative effort that emerged after the world financial crisis of 2008-9, and the ensuing Great Recession, when many students (and teachers) complained that existing textbooks didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening. In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.
Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Eve online.
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I always thought the best way to learn econ was countless hours of Dopewars.
Sure... if you have zero capacity for empathy and think sociopathy is a gift.
Um, so they get their first lesson in Economics... (Score:2)
"many colleges encourage Econ 101 students to buy (or rent) expensive textbooks, which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more"
at the bookstore.
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which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more
I love expressions like this. It encompasses any value from -infinity to +infinity, thus conveying absolutely no information whatsoever. It takes real skill to write something so vacuous.
Curriculum? Sounds like an agenda to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change..."
That's not a list of economics subjects, that's a political agenda.
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inequality
There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality. Does inequality impact growth, and if so negatively or positively? How do we measure inequality, and more generally distribution of resources? How do economic systems, and specific policy choices, influence the distribution of income and resources?
These are fundamental aspects of economic study.
globalization
Again...what is "globalization?" How do we measure it? How has it benefited or harmed different countries and different segments of society w
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There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality.
It's not much of a debate......some economists wish they could prove inequality hurts economic growth, but they've been unsuccessful. If inequality does have an impact on economic growth, it's small enough that it's really hard to measure (getting lost in the noise).
Besides, if you want to research those things, get a PhD. Economics 101 should be teaching the basics, the well-established aspects of economics.
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Those 3 issues are primarily political, and until a person has spent at least a year studying economics, he's not knowledgeable enough to make sense of the economic aspects of those issues. If they're introduced before the student is capable of handling them mathematically, we can be reasonably sure that they will be introduced in a manner that elicits an emotional response.
Oh, the poor! Economics must do something for them. (Or economics must prove that they're victims)
Oh, globalization! Unfair competitio
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Right, because absolutely none of those are economic issues.
$DIETY, where do you people come from? You're so blinded by ideology that you don't even make sense.
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If economics should not be about these, then what should it be about? Genuine question.
Boring things like understanding how money circulates in an economy, supply and demand, why some economies succeed and others fail, MV=PQ, "Gresham's Law" and various other well-proved economics theory. In an economics 101 class, you should present stuff that is well established.
And tbh if people would get the idea that, "money has no intrinsic value, even if that money is backed by gold" that would already make economics discussions online more interesting.
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Macroeconomics, the study of the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. (wikipedia).
Nice one (Score:5, Interesting)
[Golf clap].
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That doesn't mean the changes they demand won't make it even more flawed.
"Do something, even if it's wrong" is a really stupid way to run an economy.
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That doesn't mean the changes they demand won't make it even more flawed.
Where did you read their demands? All i saw was that they demanded an overhaul, not anything specific.
"Do something, even if it's wrong" is a really stupid way to run an economy.
"Keep teaching what has been proven wrong" is a worse alternative.
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Students didn't demand change because the economics theories they were taught were perfect but because they were flawed.
Indeed, but interestingly large parts of textbook macroeconomics performed (and continue to perform) very well during the crisis. ISLM / ISMP style models have accurately predicted the behavior of economic actors of all different scales this past decade. Some economic programs had neglected these approaches for some time, while others had continued them, but moved them onto a more rigorous mathematical framework. (See for example Romer's treatment of ISMP).
IMHO any movement in economics towards empirical va
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Indeed, but interestingly large parts of textbook macroeconomics performed (and continue to perform) very well during the crisis. ISLM / ISMP style models have accurately predicted the behavior of economic actors of all different scales this past decade. Some economic programs had neglected these approaches for some time, while others had continued them, but moved them onto a more rigorous mathematical framework. (See for example Romer's treatment of ISMP).
IMHO any movement in economics towards empirical validation and towards more robust models (i.e. less overfitting) is for the better.
Umm... [youtube.com] ;)
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it's quite frustrating when what they teach in economics doesn't match reality.
Seriously? What kind of crappy university did you go to, where the economics classes were so bad? What was wrong with your school?
Reads more like a manifesto than a course plan. (Score:4, Insightful)
The very fact that the first line of this article reads like the beginning of a manifesto for far left causes was the first warning sign. The fact that this tripe goes out of it's way to mention Marxist economics pretty much closes the case. Given the fact that Marxism is probably the worst way to run an economy and society that the human species has yet come up with.
Perhaps most damning is the very fact they spend more time in this article talking about how they're going to influence people than the pros and cons of this new teaching methodology. Good ideas don't need PR nearly as much as starting with your best ideas first than prove that they work with imperial evidence.
Re:Reads more like a manifesto than a course plan. (Score:5, Informative)
You must have missed that the "Marxist economics" reference wasn't about Marxism in the curriculum but rather the opposite.
"The core approach isn’t particularly radical. (Students looking for expositions of Marxian economics or Modern Monetary Theory will have to look elsewhere.)"
The first sign of "liberal bias" tickled your amygdala so badly you stopped actually reading and started looking for boogeymen behind everything.
Re:Reads more like a manifesto than a course plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bah, Humbug! (Score:3)
I'll just stick with playing this for my kids every Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Economics in a hurry (Score:3, Insightful)
People who don't understand the housing crash (Score:5, Insightful)
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Economic productivity requires labor and capital (men and machines). The laborers get a share of what is produced and the owners of the capital (rich people) get a share of what is produced.
If you don't understand that there is a free lunch for rich people then you don't understand the most basic principles of capitalism.
The laborers get their share in exchange for their labor. The owners of the capital get their share (maybe) in exchange for putting their capital at risk, often coupled with a buttload of hard work.
If you characterize the latter as a "free lunch," you've never tried to run a business.
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Political pressure from Democrats to make bad loans, bad changes in banking laws caused by both parties.
Political pressure from Democrats
Dodd-Frank (Democrats) among other things, makes the overhead expenses of large banks smaller in relation to their size. Large banks can afford bribes. The Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and
Neither Marxism nor the free market works (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that Marxism does not work, neither does the free market. The test of any economic system if it meets the needs of its people. Marxism or at least the communist versions of Marxism failed. Under these systems there were shortages of basic goods such as food and clothes.
Under the U.S. system, while we have plenty of food and clothes many people struggle to make ends meet. Our health care system is a failure with millions of people uninsured and many people with insurance who cannot afford medical care because of deductibles or copays. College is also unaffordable for many. So while we have plenty of food and clothes, many people cannot afford to meet their basic needs, especially when it comes to health care and education.
The systems that seem to work best are the hybrid systems that combine the free market and socialism, such as the Scandinavian. They use the free market where appropriate and they use socialism where appropriate thereby meeting the needs of all or almost all of their citizens.
Marx is a great unfluence but wrongly slandered (Score:2)
So many PhDs in economics didn't learn Marx. That man had an impact and did such brilliant work that it illustrates how hollow and poor an economics education has become. Marx was a genius and his work was probably mostly valid but he is forever stained with his FLAWED work which was embraced and extended into big nightmares for the world. Most our economics has been build upon ignorant beliefs about human nature, not just Marx. Today we have a lot of science on humans so informed changes to economics can
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Insurance has no necessary connection to health care. Insurance is part of the reason health care is so expensive. Health care involves a patient paying a doctor for health services. Placing an insurance company between them provides a fat income for insurance company employees and owners, with the only benefit to the patient being risk diffusion. One substantial disadvantage of health insurance is that it disconnects the patient from cost considerations: he doesn't care how much his treatment costs, so pri
They don't "teach" economics anywhere (Score:2)
There is no science to economics. It's all propaganda devised by the economic victors to ensure their continued success. People who enroll in a college to "learn" economics are being indoctrinated to think a certain rigid inflexible way that benefits a minority.
A new way to learn economics would be to eject the money-lenders from the classroom, but good luck trying to do that. Even Jesus never fully succeeded.
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So you don't know what economics is and have neither sat a course at university nor opened a standard economics textbook, right? What you describe is politics, not economics.
Relevent Reading (Score:2, Interesting)
I just finished Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains". (https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy-chains) I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks the "free market" is the be-all and end-all of economics and economic politics. It is a heavily researched and footnoted, yet very readable account of how the "economic freedom" crowd is incrementally taking over the USA using diabolical strategies hatched over the past 70 years or so. My reading staple lies in the genre of mysteries, horror and the like, but I
Definition of capitalism (Score:2)
It's what happens when people have economic freedom.
Which means people are allowed to keep the fruits of their labor.
So they will invest in productivity, which they need capital for.
Improving productivity is how we improve our quality of life.
The system they're talking about includes government meddling, which always ends badly.
All you need to know about Economics is... (Score:3)
...it's a game. It always has been, always will be. Most it is common sense math. If you want to get more advanced, read about Economic Game Theory. There are winners and losers. It's not a non-zero sum game. The winners are the ones who know best how to play the game to their advantage much like the old game of Monopoly. If you don't try to win, you're guaranteed to lose.
Life has always been a game of competition. Competition for resources, competition for mates and now with free market economics, it's competition for resources in the form of monetary value. Same as it always was.
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Forbid our institutions of higher learning teach what works.
Re: An ideolog's wet dream (Score:2)
Either you're not replying to me, or you've failed to understand my post.
Re: An ideolog's wet dream (Score:2, Interesting)
Neither of which alternatives deterred you from responding as if you had.
To be clear, teaching socialism is teaching failure. Teaching capitalism is teaching they only system demonstrated to be capable of improving the lives of common people.
Neither is perfect. One is oppressive and crushes the spirit. The other holds promise, demonstrated by recent attempts.
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It is not a problem of jealousy (I think you meant envy, actually), but rather a problem of the people at the top not contributing, by way of tax evasion, investment scams and other methods to ensure they pay very little taxes, or none at all.
I do not have a problem with people having a lot of money, as long as they acknowledge their privilege, and contribute their determined fair share to the continued existence of a healthy society, where no one has to starve, live on the street or forego even basic medic
Re:An ideolog's wet dream (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of drivel. We need more emphasis on free-market doctrines and how/why the system we have currently isn't. The more we try to add Marxist ideology to today's society, the more problems we introduce.
Allow me to point out some of the issues that make show how problematic the free-market ideology really is.
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
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If you will allow me a small rebuttal.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
-- Citation needed. If we bring back the risk to banking institutions and allow them to actually work in a free market, you won't have the huge bubbles that we do now. The collapse in 2008 was brought about because people like Maxine Watters and Al Franklin thought it best to remove t
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This is an interesting point,
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To make a long story short: Healthcare is nothing like other markets and shouldn't be a market at all.
Your argument at face value would apply to many things like food, water, housing, electricity, etc. But in reality "healthcare" is a very broad term... Tylenol for a headache is not an essential need that you'll die without. In most respects healthcare is just like every other market, especially in broad strokes. For instance if we make it easier for doctors to get into business by creating more medical schools and allowing more visas for foreign doctors, doctor salaries will fall. Healthcare is enough of a
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* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
So, instead of a year or three of depression and then a return to a healthier market, we get close to a decade (and still counting) of bitter recession. Plus, we are still set to repeat the collapse again and again, just in different industries/financial institutions as little of real relevance has changed because they weren't forced to and instead got bailouts at taxpayer expense.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
This is where in the past private charity stepped in, but those have mostly been replaced by government programs that are horrib
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LOLwut? These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business, which was enabled by the same corrupt politicians to begin with.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive exp
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One of the most significant books of economics from a right view is von Mises' Human Action. Therein, we may find that economic activities, like all activities, are based on human choices. It is human choices that drive economic actions, not economic decisions that drive human actions. In a disaster, people help others as a human choice, knowing that it makes their lives better. When helping in an emergency, economic consequences are not a leading consideration in the decision to help.
Looked at more narrowl
Adam Smith Good (Score:5, Interesting)
From the Article:
" In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems." Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad
To the contrary. For some reason, right-wingers never actually read Adam Smith; they just heard somewhere that he talked about the invisible hand, and they fail to pay attention to all of the many, many parts of Wealth of Nations in which he discusses ways that unregulated free markets fail without government intervention, and that some things can't possibly function well in the free market, so they need to be run by the government for the sake of the greater good.
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Maybe not the best choice for comparison. You will have to forgive me, it's been 30+ years since I read Wealth of Nations.
Re:Adam Smith Good (Score:5, Informative)
Smith was quite clear on the role of government actively working in markets to ensure they remained level playing fields where monopolies and cartels wouldn't be able to close the market to new startups. Further, he talked about government management of infrastructure and education in ways which promoted commerce.
Mainly, however, it's that his emphasis was on LIMITED government, such that its actions didn't distort the market through protectionism and bias.
I know your point is "right wingers are stupid" but most of the conservatives I know are not anarchist libertarians. They're not even anti-tax; they're perfectly fine with government as long as it's limited in its role - a federal government whose primary function is the 'fair' redistribution of wealth and social justice would indeed make Smith spin in his grave.
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a federal government whose primary function is the 'fair' redistribution of wealth and social justice would indeed make Smith spin in his grave.
Who made that argument? I'm sure you can find a Marxist hippie somewhere in California who says that, but nowhere in this thread is anyone saying that. Not in the textbook. Not in the mainstream media. Not by any elected politician anywhere in the United States in the last 50 years (at least). Seriously, this is a big problem when talking to many conservatives. You start to question/debate the role of government in regulating the free market and suddenly they jump to extremist and absurd viewpoints that no
Marx or Smith, no other choices. (Score:2)
Not many right-wing people believe in absolutely free markets;
And not many left-wing people believe in absolute Marxism.
It was a straw man from the start.
Bullshit (Score:2)
>> Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad
Uhm ... No. let me think about it ... No. Let me read it again ... NO!
The statement does NOT, again NOT, read "Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad". It means just what it said, that is less emphasis on free market and more emphasis on how to solve real freaking problems. Period.
I think that you and the people that modded you up are the main reason why we long lost a problem solving approach to real world issues.
Please keep your nonsensical one liners to the twit
BTW from TFA (Score:2)
The core approach isn’t particularly radical. (Students looking for expositions of Marxian economics or Modern Monetary Theory will have to look elsewhere.) But it treats perfectly competitive markets as special cases rather than the norm, trying to incorporate from the very beginning the progress economists have made during the past forty years or so in analyzing more complex situations: when firms have some monopoly power; people aren’t fully rational; a lot of key information is privately held; and the gains generated by trade, innovation, and finance are distributed very unevenly. The core curriculum also takes economic history seriously.
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In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere. Hurricane Irma proved this to be false where normally supplied goods were simply not available. Free Markets allow for price changes to compensate people for supplying goods in short supply that are harder to get during certain circumstances. While we all hate gouging, price freezes keeps additional supply from entering that market, because the cost to bring those goods in isn't rewarded w
libertarianism is brain damage (Score:3)
In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere.
There are a number of conditions required by perfect competition [wikipedia.org]. I don't think you've said quite what you meant to say there.
rather than have my only option be Comcast with Net Neutrality.
Net neutrality has nothing to do with broadband competition.
the problem (government interference in free market
The real solution is to build out last mile in such a way that the free market offers people the services they want, at whatever price the market will bear. I want municipal owned infrastructure
Yeah, me too. I'm a bit of a socialist, so it makes sense. What schizophrenic crack pipe did you pick up on your way home from the Church of the Free Market?
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Today, we know that ability is entirely genetic and that it follows a bell curve distribution.
Nothing could reveal a deeper lack of understanding about contemporary biology than that sentence. It simultaneously rejects our actual findings and betrays an erroneous confidence in the power of current methods, all without any apparent irony.
Under other circumstances I would feel compelled to say more, but the parent is either a troll or an ideologue and I don't want to waste the time.
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It would help first to understand that "tabula rasa" translates to "blank slate", literally. It is used in reference to the notion that all knowledge is acquired, not innately possessed. It has nothing to do with rationalism or ability, and it is certainly not a myth unless you are a crazy person. Second,
Today, we know that ability is entirely genetic and that it follows a bell curve distribution.
Nevermind, you are a crazy person. This idea while once, let's say circulated because popular isn't quite the right word, has been thoroughly discredited by pretty much all biological and neuroscience resea
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Adam Smith even came up with the idea of unconditional basic income, which is like kryptonite to modern day libertarians.
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Cronyism. It's CRONYism, dammit! Sheesh, no wonder capitalism is so hard.
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Feudalism (n) the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
Really?
Dominantly capitalist systems tend to degrade toward socialism as two things combine forces: 1.The education system fails to maint
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The only Leftist Indoctrination on the radio is in the PSAs.
Re: Leftist (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say indoctrination in the sense that economics is supposed to be about understanding how the economy works. Free market simply references the market forces of supply and demand, how they impact prices, and things that may (or may not) cause them to change, and why. Issues like inequality and climate change, while related to economics, are orthogonal issues. It sounds like they're trying to change a subject that focuses on a mixture of mathematics, politics, and psychology to that of a humanities class.
They do have a point about not adequately explaining the cause of the great recession, but that is a failure on the part of whoever is teaching the macroeconomics courses at the schools in question, and not necessarily the study of economics as a whole. One of the major failures of colleges these days is that while they are good at giving you knowledge, they totally fail at teaching you how to think. Muddying these two topics would only make that worse, as it teaches against examining topics from an "all other things being equal" perspective, which it just so happens is critical to economics.
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The failures to explain are many fold but the biggest is the lack of regulation that allowed the banks to create many layers of imaginary macro-instruments overlay on the underlying mortgages, made those banks the sole or primary clients of the firms who we
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Science isn't leftwing or rightwing. Science supports a lot of things, but one of the things science does, is force people to prove their points. The process of Politics is a separate process. Science should be left to scientists, not politicians. I'm sick of people selectively remembering "science" when it is politically expedient.
Case in point, all the left wing loons that are blaming two hurricanes on Trump's election and global warming. Where were they the last 10 years or so, when hurricanes were pract
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Marxism has failed every real world test it's been put to.
Who is the Marxist? The socialist government textbook monopolists extorting money from bourgeoisie students, or the people providing a free alternative?
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"If you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."
Makes you wonder who the customer of this textbook actually is, doesn't it?
Re:Leftist (Score:5, Insightful)
The people writing a textbook based on idiotic Marxist dogma?
Look, they may lean left, they may even believe in Social Justice, but there is no "Marxist dogma" about globalization and climate change. If you click on the link, and skim the book, you can see that their views are more in line with Thomas Piketty than Karl Marx. Calling them "Marxists" makes about as much sense as calling Milton Friedman a Nazi (yes, people have done that too).
Re:Leftist (Score:5, Insightful)
They did specifically mention inequality, which all flavors of socialism and communism claim to solve (which is false; all they do replace the meritocracy of capitalism with a political caste system that offers almost no chance for ordinary people to move up within.) This is also ignoring the fact that having equality is actually impossible to begin with.
Also (and I'm not sure if they mentioned this) anybody who subscribes to the idea of socioeconomic classes of rich, middle, and poor, is buying into a concept popular among communists who want to drive a wedge between people so they can have their glorious revolutions (which only end poorly for those who they claim to represent) under the farce concept called class warfare.
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They did specifically mention inequality
Adam Smith also mentioned inequality. So does that make him a Marxist as well?
Karl Marx advocated government ownership of the means of production, take by force from the capitalists, without compensation. Please follow the link in TFA to the textbook, and see if you can find even a single passage that advocates anything even remotely comparable.
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I'm curious as to how you think this is Marxist. Pretty sure that the answer is that you're simply using the word as an epithet, but I'm hoping you're not tanking the SNR of this discussion.
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Power always concentrates, whether it be in your government or in corporations. Or in that group of parents whose kids get special consideration in return for their generous giving.
Free market forces help spread this power, but when that fails (and it sometimes does), regulations seek to fill the gap. So do regulations which provide checks and balances within the structures of government.
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But, please consider that when power concentrates, such as when those rich kids get special consideration, that power will seek to modify the regulations. In that way, you may hope that the regulations will seek to fill the gap, but they will very often seek with serendipity to preserve or even increase the gap. A regulation to "protect the public", often does little more than keep someone from starting a business. A $200 fee to purchase a "business license" (which does what, exactly?), is a mere nuisanc
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Marxism has failed every real world test it's been put to.
Reverse of no true Scotsman: if it didn't fail, it's not true Marxism. :)
The Scandinavian socialist countries (Denmark, Sweden, etc.) seem to be doing quite well for themselves. And there are plenty of capitalist countries where you wouldn't want to live there unless you were among the ruling elite.
Point being, there's isn't some straight and narrow path where one little misstep leads to disaster. Some countries have high taxes and do reasonably well while other countries have low taxes and do reasonably we
Re:Leftist (Score:5, Informative)
The Scandinavian socialist countries (Denmark, Sweden, etc.) seem to be doing quite well for themselves. And there are plenty of capitalist countries where you wouldn't want to live there unless you were among the ruling elite.
This is false (or at least misleading) because those countries are capitalist in every sense of the word. For that sentence to make sense, you have to understand the difference between free market, welfare, and socialism.
Capitalism first and foremost means that the means of production is owned by private individuals, and they are sold on a free market.
Free market means that when you trade something, its price is determined by the forces of supply and demand, as opposed to a governing entity requiring otherwise. There are many schools of thought on just how unencumbered a market can to still be considered free, as even things like price ceilings or wage floors can still be considered free market, but that is another topic that is highly debatable with many valid arguments on all sides.
Welfare means that a governing entity is paying money to a private party on your behalf so that you can obtain something. For example in food stamps, the government is giving the merchant money so that they give you food.
Socialism means that the means of production (i.e. factories, farms, infrastructure) is owned by the government, and the people who do the producing (i.e. workers) are also employed by the government, and the government sets prices. This is also called a planned economy. If you look up the definition of socialism, you'll see exactly this, though it may also say that the means of production is communally owned, which in practice when a community sets rules and laws, the community is in fact a government.
Now, back to Scandinavian countries: They are, in fact, capitalist, with a strong welfare component, which again fits within capitalism without being socialism at all. However, just like all western countries, they do have a few socialized (read: government owned) industries. Examples include road construction, water utilities, power utilities, trash collection, etc. In some western countries (namely England) the health care industry is also government owned. In others, the health care system is still privatized but is entirely welfare driven (Australia for example.)
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Taking the example of Sweden, you are not talking about a static social system. Sweden had one of the world's freest economies for a long time; it prospered and became relatively rich.
Then Sweden voted to become socialist. The work ethic continued for a while (after all, when it's as cold as Sweden is, it's pretty obvious that if you don't produce, you die) but eventually the corrosive effects of socialism weakened that, and the economic drain on previously great companies caused them to become unprofitable
Re:Leftist (Score:5, Insightful)
Marxism is more specific than 'Socialist'. If 'The means of production' are in private hands, it's not Marxist.
The scandinavian countries are, generally speaking 'capitalist welfare states'.
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GP is correct; in fact he's one of the very few people on slashdot that I've seen that actually understand the differences between these economic systems.
You can be forgiven for assuming that socialism means welfare, because lesser educated democrats and republicans alike tend to think the same thing while also tending to speak the loudest, but they're both quite wrong, and in being wrong and outspoken they easily mislead economic laypersons.
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You can be forgiven for assuming that socialism means welfare ...
I disagree. There mere popularity of this conflation should not render so basic an error forgivable. ;)
In fact those familiar with the history of the modern welfare state will recognise it as an avowedly anti-socialist in(ter)vention, the carrot to Bismark's legislative stick. To be fair, the confusion is no doubt in part a product of nominally 'Socialist' parties in Western democracies increasingly abandoning actual socialism in favour of
Re:Leftist (Score:5, Insightful)
The combination of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland is about 80% of the population of Venezuela. Venezuela depends on the combination of a relatively small population and the export (to capitalistic nations) of natural resources to fund the social programs.
Would you like to explain the difference in economic success?
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finlands best export market was soviet..
Re: Leftist (Score:5, Informative)
the gap between rich and poor is extreme
Uhhh, what? The Nordic countries are at the very top when it comes to equality and the smallest gap between rich and poor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And in regards to debt, would you care to find the numbers for the US? Hint: It's not very small at all.
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You are making the common mistake of believing that the goal of Marxism is the betterment of humanity.
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Capitalism might have its flaws, but it best mirrors human nature. We're imperfect as well. It harnesses our flaws to motivate people. It corrects surplus and scarcity based on our flaws. Nothing can ever be perfect. But at least, it has a feedback mechanism that works with our imperfections. It's the basis for barter and trade and pretty much every market that's ever existed. Even in socialist experiments, market based economies sprout up underground. It's the natural order of things. The premise
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Capitalism does need very heavy regulation, though, in order to prevent monopolies and exploitation.
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If you take a look at what monopolies do exist in capitalist areas, you will find they are nearly all created by regulation and not prevented by it. You should reconsider your analysis; perhaps the remaining exploitation can be removed by reducing regulation.
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Sorry no. The successive right-wing governments here have tried that, and it's made the situation worse, in every case.
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And in pretty much all ways, Capitalism, as envisioned as this unfettered beast which solves all problems, is a complete and utter fucking lie.
I don't recall anybody saying that. In this sense, capitalism is very much like democracy: Full of problems, but the best system we've come up with so far. Indeed, capitalism does democratize wealth unlike any other system that has come before it, and any other known system to this day. People who talk about how we need to replace capitalism always fail to explain what it would need to be replaced with. Most of them answer socialism, but you don't need to look hard at all to find out why socialism is terrib
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Re:Leftist (Score:4, Interesting)
You are promulgating a lie. "Perfect information" is a straw man created by some enemies of capitalism in order to discredit capitalism. FWIW information is also a product, which can be charged for.
Any claim that some system of human affairs is perfect is untrue. Knowledgeable and honest adherents of Capitalism do not claim that Capitalism is perfect. Capitalists acknowledge the necessity of a court system to handle disputes, that alone shows that they understand that Capitalism isn't perfect.
First, a lesson in English grammar and logic: in any statement like the above made without any qualifiers, the qualifiers "all" and "always" are presumed. Thus your statement reads in full "All companies always lie and cheat all their customers." This is obviously false, and a little thought reveals that if it were close to true civilization would be impossible.
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You can find economists that will say _anything_. It's called the 'dismal science' for a reason.
Who are the 'real economists'? The ones that agree with you?
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There have been more than a couple, like any other field. What you are actually thinking of is economics pundits. In physics there is a bunch of pundits saying cold fusion is right around the corner and so forth. Do you also criticize real physicists for the same bullshit reasons you are criticizing real economists? I thought not. The problem is that you dont know who the real economists are, not that
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You can also find physicists that will say _anything_, even ones who have made otherwise good contributions. Take Nikola Tesla for example.
That aside, economics is actually whats called a soft science, but it's by far not alone in having that title, mainly because economic theories rely heavily on another well known soft science: Psychology. In fact, all social sciences are soft sciences, because people are highly unpredictable animals.
Pretty much the only hard natural sciences are all of the physics and ch
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