When I studied economics in high school my mum always emphasized that the assumption that people acted rationally was really fucking stupid
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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Acting Rationally isn't the same as Acting Perfectly
For instance, running across the street to get out of the rain is rational. But you can still fall through an open manhole or get hit by a speeding car you didn't notice.
Cool. People don't reliably act rationally, though.
People do, practically by construction of the term. Rationality is the social norm. Irrationality is typically defined as some variant of mental disorder.
Rational patterns of behavior are critical to an individual's health and well-being. They're also patterns that can be observed, extrapolated, and exploited. So you'll often see an individualistic rational action (for instance, fleeing from danger) manipulated by a malicious actor (for instance, someone shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater) in order to achieve a large scale negative result (a stampede or crowd crush).
You can point to a crowd crush and conclude "Everyone in that crowd was irrational" when no single individual did anything at any given moment that didn't make sense from their point of view.
And even if everyone did act rationally we have so many examples where that still doesn't lead to the optimal outcome.
That said, economics is still a science. A field can have flaws and still be considered science
As much as Milton Friedman makes bloody sense, his ideas are what led us to the neoliberal hellhole and eventually to fascism. His motto "greed is good" enabled excessive individualism and fawning of private property, leading to selfishness at the expense of the common good.
Improving and maintaining the common good is as beneficial as economic self-interest. The CEOs would not be where they are had they not benefited from the labour of others and resources from nature.
Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is far closer to theology than physics.
Asking an economist for advice is akin to asking a priest.
Can confirm.
But DAMN, will they make the case that we're correct AF while hedging and saying "well, it depends..." half the time.
Yep!
Economics is a valid area of study, after all everyone loves money and needs some. Things work better for everyone when it is moving around optimally.
But money also buys opinions from feckless nerds. Thus the entire ‘science’ of economics as the public sees it is much more akin to a company paying a consultant to come in to deliver bad news about needed layoffs. It is pure theatre to deflect ire away from the real reasons.
Depends on who you ask. There are economists who actually go through all the data and are the ones who can provide sources and examples and there are the ones who go “trust me bro the companies love and care about you and totally listen to your opinions bro please the free market will protect you and you totally have power pleeeeeeease bro”.
there are the ones who go “trust me bro the companies love and care about you and totally listen to your opinions bro please the free market will protect you and you totally have power pleeeeeeease bro”.
Those people are influencers, not economists.
How is this any different to the various incarnations of priests? Economists interpret budgets as if they’re dregs of tea leaves, and unemployment statistics like the entrails of a sacrificial animal.
It doesn’t matter how rigorously someone analyses scripture, the end result can only ever intersect with reality by accident.
Yeah, scientists do that too, as a geologist, the hardest of hard sciences pun very much intended
We look at crystals like the dregs of tea leaves and isotope ratios like they're the entrails of a sacrificed animal.
As a common heard saying on mines, 3 geologists will have 4 opinions
The difference is that economics is a social science, masquerading as a hard science. Nothing wrong with the social sciences but they often present themselves as though the results they've found are akin to a hard science experiment with the lowest R values on record. In fact, ironically, most economists tend to look down their noses at the other social sciences and I think it's causing them a lot of dukkha.
Ironically, it's the social sciences that would help them realise that their discipline was already enough, as it was, all along.
The real problem came when neoclassical economics was rebranded as "just basic economics!" and not one of many conflicting, equally supported, schools of thought.
My study presented economics as a soft science, so I'm not sure where you're coming from.
Of course it's a social science, but even those use experiments and the scientific method, or do you also think sociology and psychology are bullshit?
STEM people are the ones always looking down on every other discipline, you're the case in point.
When did I say that any of them were bullshit? Can you not make up things i didn't say and then argue against that instead please?
I literally said that the subject was already good enough, as it was. How did you miss that?
The difference is that economics is a social science, masquerading as a hard science. Nothing wrong with the social sciences but they often present themselves as though the results they’ve found are akin to a hard science experiment with the lowest R values on record. In fact, ironically, most economists tend to look down their noses at the other social sciences and I think it’s causing them a lot of dukkha.
This entire paragraph was really telling.
Okay, so, I'll try again, which bit is the part where I said the subject was bullshit? From the looks of it, it does seem as though you just made it up and argued against that, instead of what I said.
Interesting that you left out the part where I said it was always good enough all along thought. Then again, I guess that part does really shit all over the nonses you're spewing doesn't it?
At this point I'm concerned that you genuinely can't tell the difference between the words I used and "all economics is bullshit."
Why would I call an ambulance? If it made sense for it to come it would already be here
The free market will save him.
Oh fuck, that one made me laugh audibly enough to scare the dog.
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