Talk:Economics/Old talk

I'm a little concerned that Economics as a formal branch of mathematics is totally ignored here in favor of the social science, which came after the mathematical models. I'm also not sure it makes sense to call "scarcity" the fundamental concept underlying economics; I might have chosen rationality, comparability of values, or efficiency. No mention at all of important concepts like Pareto optimality, revealed preference, marginal utility? I'm just a dabbler, but surely there's someone here with a better background in mathematical economics that could do a reasonable job fixing this? --LDC

Scarcity is in fact fundamental. If goods aren't scarce we can have all we want of them and so there is no need for economics. All the other terms-- like marginal utility, efficiency -- LDC mentions become important because we have scarcity.

Further, mathematics is just a tool albeit a a very important one -- not an end in itself -- in economics. First and foremost, Economics is a social sciense. Historically, economics as a social science came first and the use of mathematics was introduced gradually.

-- Gretchen

You are quite right - there is a mathematical side of economics (or as one of my professors would say hardcore econometrics). I could write up about 30-40 pages and subpages on the subject. It will take up some time though, and the real problem is to stick to the theoretical side and not to engage oneself into discussions about which view is right or wrong - we would clearly miss the point here. Anyway, you are the first person that has borught this up and I'm grateful for that. WP

I put in a brief section on econometrics and added a little to the network effects section. Could add more, and may do so later. No guarantee it's totally precise and correct, but if I could do that off the top of my head, I'd probably be writing a textbook rather than updating Wiki b/c I felt like it ...

Yikes, I agree, those are all important. But let's get to neutral on the structure first. I think the Fundamentals and History section are better up front because they simply don't take sides or introduce 'capitalism vs. not' - actually they frame the idea of political economy almost perfectly, and show how animal (instinctual swaps) to hunter-gatherer to more complex trade build up... a very even beginning, but kind of out of place at the very very end - 24

That said, many people will come here wanting to do a crash course in Economics 101 and so political economy, fundamentals, foundations, etc., should be nothing but links up front for them... hard to know how to handle this.

On the other hand, some university-educated former peasant in Cambodia with 5000 words of English will come here wanting to know why "Economics" is destroying his village and country, and that market has less support from neutral sources.

I'd say, err heavily on the side of neutrality, since that improves articles and gives something that can't be provided elsewhere - a neutral point of view. Fundamentals would go first, mention the concerns of the non-capitalist schools, end with the concept of political economy, link off to capitalism, and then proceed to explain how that political economy's terms are applied in the present: the rest of the article. Is that fair enough?

My vote would be for keeping this article fairly short, and essentially just saying: here are all the articles we have on economics here in Wikipedia, with brief uncontroversial explanations. More controversial ideas, like, say, Marx vs Neoclassical, should go in the respective articles so that it is very clear who is saying what.


 * if that's the approach, then ONLY the Fundamentals section and a laundry list of different theories of political economy would go here. Since good old capitalism is the most prevalent, we can lay out the way it defines the major branches of economics:  macro, micro, resource.  And the theories classical, neoclassical, Keynes, etc..  But really that's more or less what the article is now.  I agree completely that this article must not *COMPARE* different economic models, as that is the role of political economy anyway.  This is also exactly what is done in factors of production, capital, means of production.  So these five files have managed to be very neutral, and avoided taking sides extremely carefully.  Tough since neoclassical/libertarian, classical/conservative, Marxist/socialist, green/environmental schools *PRETEND* they are talking about different things... but clearly and obviously aren't on micro-level.


 * so, I think the whole controversy is about macro, and that we should say that it is only about macro. In micro you can see a clean classical -> Marxist or neoclassical -> green transition with only very minor quirks of difference between the four.  In Macro, basically, everything is religion.

If anything, I think the article could be slimmed down with, for example, some of the history stuff going in history of economic thought.


 * There's only one paragraph of history here now, and yes it should link to history of economic thought. I agree the whole article needs editing, but I can't see any content that can be omitted and still leave the casual reader roughly understanding the scope of real economics.


 * how about this. Fundamentals takes you from the simple difference between animals (who don't trade except for some apes who engage in prostitution...!) and the earliest human societies which trade loosely and informally, e.g. in hunter gatherer bands.  That distinction is important to understanding that economics is not somethign made up by economists, as many people now believe.  That section would take you up to political economy and explain that the most dominant political econmy is this thing capitalism which may be itself part of evolution or it may be just one way to do things (we should NOT take a side on THIS!) among humans (since trade is "our thing" that makes us unique I would hope we have a choice about it - but maybe not).


 * then, the *MICRO* concepts are introduced loosely with links to the other articles: factors of production, capital, etc..  Actually the way the micro articles are laid out is very good now and I think it is possible to explain each and every macro theory laying out how it sees each micro "style of capital" or whatever.  MACRO is a dog no matter what you do, the fields don't agree, they don't want to agree, and politics is all over - see green economists or anti-globalization movement for a good list of current debates.


 * what I think we can't do is just slough this off on the reader with a list of links... as if the subject is too hot to handle. It isn't, the Fundamentals and the Micro factors of production are seen the same by all schools, even the Marxists - they just resist the term "human capital".

-- Rewrite improves it significantly, one nitpick: there is not enough focus on the thing economics is actually about - the formation, administration and optimization of *markets*, e.g. commodity markets. Mostly a matter of language, but all these players and studies are clustered around things, and those things are markets.

Another minor nitpick is that the Fundamentals section used to nicely bridge between the idea that economics is about the human ability to choose and trade, whereas the exactly same allocation of resources in other animals is guided mostly by instinct and is studied in biology and ecology. In the old wording, that bridged neatly to the hunter-gatherer society stuff. In the new one, it's a bit harder to tell how anyone could believe that hunter-gatherer society can be irrelevant if animal behavior and ecology are relevant... where is the bridge? This whole matter may need a rewrite to make the extreme views clear - I presume Margulis' flat statement that economics is ecology for humans is one such extreme. Is there another extreme saying that economics is the pinnacle of human activity coming directly from god, contrary in all ways to our animal nature, or whatever? Seems to me I've seen quotes like that...

-- "capitalism" doesn't belong on front page, i agree.
 * I think it does. The vast majority of the world's population is now living under a regime of neoclassical economic assumptions applied via various institutions under a  political economy of capitalism.  If you read those articles, and commodity markets and instructional capital, but especially factors of production you will see a subtext of assumptions that basically explain, to popular satisfaction, why capitalism is popular.  We need to think more about the three billionth user here.


 * This is very very important, as 10000 indymedia authors will get here soon, and if we don't have solid material on these issues, they'll just tear up every article with polemic and create chaos. You might also wish to review anti-globalization movement and green economists to see the basic conflicts in poli sci that are driving this.  of course, if you find any of that wildly out of line with your own thinking, by all means cite and correct, but please try to avoid the wholesale cut-outs that more ignorant people here are engaged in... personally I NEVER remove a line of any article written by anyone else, but work with it and try to work its point of view in citing where it comes from.
 * The most credible players on a values-neutral and state-neutral economics are in the UK, of course. Oliver Harding at the London Health Observatory which is engaged in measuring well-being in the UK for the Blair government's U.K. Social Exclusion Unit, seems to have drawn the hardest lines around social capital rather than letting it fuzz out like Paul Adler (the global guru on this) has.  Also, Nigel Nicholson of the London Business School wrote an article called "how hardwired is human behavior" - highly recommended, hits on the "fundamentals" problems hard.  I don't know how the London School of Economics has characterized the issues in moral purchasing or intellectual capital but it's obviously key to understanding how they see this "brand versus flag versus label" thing that confuses so many in America (where e.g. Coca-cola is all three at once ;-))
 * you will notice, from all those question marks, that no one here seems to know much about the real world. On the other hand, put double square brackets around the name of any character in any Ayn Rand novel and you'll find an abundance.  There is a serious Systemic Bias of Wikipedia as it stands. - 24

-speculation: in twenty years, economics will be incorporated as a branch of general systems theory. (doesn't belong on front page either)
 * it's a common speculation especially among Gaians and terrist and Terran types. However, the objections are serious:  we don't actually understand biology enough to make it a branch of general systems theory, nor necessarily should we, as general systems assumes a "God's eye view" of events that is increasingly suspect thanks to body philosophers.  Second, economics, biology and systems/physics theory (especially anti-reductionists) just doesn't deal with ethics well enough - most economic choice is ethical, see moral purchasing.  Also, read the early Amartya Sen, especially "economics and ethics" and most importantly "is internal consistency of choice bizarre?" where he asks key body philosophy of action/body questions in context of economics.  Sen is a heavyweight.  He will do something quite new in the next 20 years.  Let's not contradict it here:


 * Thus, my speculation is that economics, biology, ethics, and physics will all combine into a new thing to *REPLACE* general systems theory - that thing called "bionomics" which works for what biological stuff we can see, and then a more rigorous thing (including probably morality and ecology on a strictly local basis, i.e. breathing and moving as per the body philosophers, as a new micro-economics) that works as a foundation ontology. But that does not belong on the front page either. All we're doing here is documenting the field as it is, trying to be even between classical, neoclassical, Marxist and green approaches.  I'd say the UN backing for the idea of "natural capital" and the heavy influence of the greens makes them a first-class school (of green economists) even though they lack a clear political economy of their own (which your theory here would have to be).

MLP-Volt
 * welcome, and as you seem intelligent, I'd like your speculation on this - we have a problem brewing in commodity money over how to treat the gold standard. I suspect we just can't use the terms "commodity money", "fiat money" or "credit money" which are approximations disputed in the various theories, and should refer to the backing and clearing process directly, i.e. credit clearing, commodity clearing, and fiat clearing, describing how settlement occurs.  That would assume that all three types of assurance could be involved in "backing", and that what really mattered for purposes of money was not "backing versus clearing versus tokens" but the clearing process as it relates to trust at the point of trade.  If you agree, you might wish to rewrite commodity money and fiat money this way, looking at the diffs in the history and at the talk to see what disputes have been arising there and in military fiat.  It won't take you long to see what the problem is - a bunch of folks who seem to believe history started with 1776 (Smith, USA) and no experience of the post-classical schools are citing off old textbooks with non-neutral definitions.  This is fine in micro-economics, there's no difference in how the theories treat factors of production or means of production ultimately, but for macro, it's obviously a complete disaster, and I'm too busy with other stuff to fix the damage they seem to be doing.
 * So, you're welcome to wade in. To see the issue clearly, read this gold standard = fiat in disguise which is an anti-fiat rant:  "as long as you price your gold in fiat dollars and not in silver, or you price your silver in fiat dollars and not in gold, you are a part of the problem."  As you know, the vast majority of the cranks believe this, and they're about to get here in the dozens at least.  So we have to pre-answer this type of question, and avoid ideological bias of claiming that money is "all credit" or "all commodity" or "all fiat" - thus the clearing or backing terminology is essential. -24

ALL of the above could use more citation and qualification, as it is very hard to write a totally neutral text that doesn't take sides on issues of state or values. And whose terms the classical, neoclassical, Marxist and green gurus would at least all recognize and not hack up. Which must be our objective, if we wish wiki to have the most citable and most trusted text on the subject anywhere in the world.

And if that's not what we want, why the hell are we here?

---

Anyway if you truly don't give a shit, thanks for your input so far. ;-) - 24