Here are some questions intended to provide some discussion, not to rile anybody up. So, here goes
If academia really has been bought by the state, as opposed to simply being misguided, why are they so poorly paid relative to their investment in human capital.
If the economics profession really has been bought by the state, as opposed to simply being misguided, why are they so much more inclined to the market than other scientists.
If the Nobel Prize is awarded for political reasons, why have Becker, Buchanan, Coase, Stigler, Friedman and Ostrom won it?
Can you name five economics who you disagree with who are both intelligent and honest?
Without exposing yourself to as much criticism as possible, how can you be sure you’re correct?
Why so much attention on Keynes given that he is out of favour in academia.
If the state wants to buy out the intellectuals, why the tenure system?
Investment always has a speculative risk. There is nothing that guarantees that demand for your product will be enough to make the investment profitable.
As it turns out, without the state the market value of academic economists is zero, so in spite of their large investment they are not poorly paid, but overpaid.
Because his policy recommendations continue to be implemented. Print money, deficit spend, keep demand going. Cutting through the noise, that is the Keynesian prescription, and that is what is being implemented, is it not? (I’m aware of the neo- this and new-that, etc., and that today’s mainstream economists don’t accept Keynesian theory, per se. But, my point is, that Keynesian prescriptions are being implemented by government, so that’s what makes him relevant.)
Please try to define “poorly paid” in a non-subjective, non-arbitrary way.
If the economics profession is simply misguided, why have the economists of the age of the super-state been so much less inclined to the market than the economists of the 19th century?
Drop the Manicheanism. The profession is both misguided AND corrupted. To completely deny either silly. To agonize over the exact extent of either is a waste of time.
See above.
Pretty much every economist is intelligent; I even take umbrage at people calling Krugman an idiot, which I regard as a rhetorical abuse of language. Not every economist is honest. But yes, it is fully possible to be an intelligent, honest, interventionist economist.
Who’s not exposing themselves to criticism?
Define smart. It is entirely possible for an extremely cognitively talented individual to, for whatever reason, latch on to unsound notions.
For argument sake, even if 100% of academics were incorruptable and misguided by stupidity rather than career prospects, the demand for academic careers would still eminate from the state and the positions would still be filled by the state.
A lot of times when people start out a sentence with, “You know, honestly, I…”, they are about to tell you a lie. This seems like the same old Giles “appeal to authority” Stratton to me (old username of hayekianxyz for the newbs). Giles, I think that a lot of us appreciate that you post less nowadays, but it was nicer when you weren’t littering our forum at all IMO.
[from the last stupid thread you made]
Calling something a travesty isn’t a challenge. I don’t have to devote my time to re-proving things to someone so obviously biased and unwilling to discuss anything honestly.
The whole premise of your asteroid hypo had 2 more big problems which I didn’t get to because you never responded.
What sort of (non-profit, free market even) institution chooses to limit contributions to 1/1 billionth of the goal? Forget that an asteroid is headed for the Earth. Nobody with the stated purpose does that without some reason, yet you placed this ridiculous, artificial constraint.
Even if your (non-)argument held water, you would have to proceed to make the case for one world government because all governments are in a state of anarchy amongst themselves. What if it isn’t just a “[world-leader]-sized rock” headed for the Earth?
The fact that politics plays a huge role in the Oscars doesn’t mean that great films never get Oscars merely that they don’t get them nearly as often. Further it would be obvious to point out neither of the above’s arguments entail anarchism or use rationalist methodology- inc praxeology, classical economics and even Marxist etc, which is safe to say far more unorthodox than anything espoused them.
Most of my economics lecturers in particular Patrick Minford.
I’m not sure where you are going with this. Are you saying forum goers don’t expose themselves to criticism or that Austrian economists in general do not? I can see a slight point for some of the former who haven’t studied economics at university but for the latter certainly not. As ever unorthodox groups always engage better with orthodoxy than vice versa- there’ll be far more Austrian economists who can offer erudite critiques of the mainstream than vice versa; I can only think of Caplan’s in recent years.
No, Steve Horowitz is!!!
On serious note probably not but that isn’t a slight against them. I’d probably put Socrates and Aristotle at the top, excluding Jesus of course. I would say though that Mises is probably the best economist who lived and Rothbard as one of the best economic and revisionist historians.
Because he obviously is. Not that we still have fully blown Keynesian ideas bouncing around but they certainly have their recent origins there- price rigidity, mass aggregation, inflationism etc In a similar way Irving Fisher is still relevant and possible more so Leon Walras.
OK, well, I’ll fess up and say that I’d actually been out drinking with a few buddies before I typed this post so perhaps I didn’t put the necessary thought into the tone I was using. I can assure you guys that this topic was really just meant to stimulate some discussion on a subject that is clearly important to a lot of you. It was all meant in good faith so I’m sorry that I didn’t make that clear, I’ll reword the OP accordingly.
This still doesn’t come close to answering the relevant question. For a young economist with going on the job market with PhD in hand, if he’s not coming from a top school with a strong job market paper, by choosing a job at a research university as opposed to a private firm he’s giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars. Academic economists are overworked and underpaid relative to their investment in human capital, not to mention most of them will spend their lives in obscurity with only a handful of people in their field reading the papers they produce.
There are plenty of reasons for Keynes’ popularity, I won’t deny that some of them were political but the profession has changed since then. But it’s also worthwhile remembering that Keynes was a very charismatic and charming individual, plenty of people have testified to his ability to convince people in person when he wouldn’t have been able to do so in print, this becomes all the more important when it is realised that he moved in very influential circles. Also, the economy had just tanked in a way that it hadn’t before, I don’t entirely agree with Kuhn but he was right to point out that “paradigm shifts” can occur due to sociological reasons. Just as we’ve seen a resurgence of Keynesian ideas recently, they saw Keynes rise to popularity because they felt that classical economics was either to fault for the persistent unemployment or unable to explain it.
I’ve spoken to a few of the professors at my university and I really don’t think any of them are “corrupt”. Granted, when all I have is a single digit sample size I can’t claim much scientific rigour, but I don’t see any reason why this sample size isn’t accurate. I don’t wish to sound condescending Lilburne, but there’s a lot people on these forums miss because of either not attending university or not engaging it.
Now, as for your question, I don’t think the point you’re trying to make is very convincing. Here’s a few reasons why:
There is still far more intervention in the economy than most economists would prescribe, this means things like minimum wage, barriers to trade, taxation and other forms of regulation.
One would think that in the age of the “super-state” those economists who promote the most government intervention would be most popular. The opposite couldn’t be more true, if you believe that Austrians are marginalized then you must also think that the Post-Keynesians are to an even greater extent, and I’m not even mentioning the Marxists…
You’ve not established causality, only correlation. I think it’s just as plausible (in fact, I think it’s more so) that the ideas of academics have influenced public debate and public policy than economists have been bought off by the state to convince the public.
Following on from the last point, most economics don’t give a damn about the public and what the public thinks. On most issues public opinion stands directly in opposition (see Caplan’s work) to the opinion of the average economist. This is exactly why most economists don’t write books and op-eds but stick to journals that will be read by only a handful of people. Teaching undergrads is enough of a chore for most professors.
Wow, tough crowd huh? E.R. Olovetto, clearly you’ve taken issue with something I’ve done or said. We’re both quite regular posters here so I’m sorry to see this. I’ll say it again, all my posts are meant with complete sincererity and I’d like to think that most people here would embrace such honest criticism, given the number of complaints about being ignored. I’d like to resolve this with you, posts like yours leave a bad taste in my mouth and often end up distracting from otherwise productive discussion. So, if you’re willing to send me a message detailing exactly what it is that you find so distasteful about me I’ll be sure to answer. Otherwise it’s probably best for you to leave these personal issues out of your posts, of perhaps just ignore me completely.
About the other topic. I’ve been really busy lately, so I’ve not had time to read the Block paper you cited. Once I do so I’ll get around to answering you and the other posters.
When you are being employed by the state, I think it is pretty fair to assume that this will generally cause you to be considerably more lenient towards the state than would otherwise be the case. With that said, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that economists (in my experience at least) have been corrupted by the state. You just have to judge each economist individually I guess.
Yes, exactly. Also it’s important to recognize that the subtle corruption of subconscious bias is much more the problem than outright cynical dishonesty.
How does the young PhD “choose” between a research university and a private firm if he does not have the desired credentials? Seems like he has no choice.
How is this not the labor theory of value? I can dig a ditch across the desert with a shovel, a huge investment in human capital, but what is the “value” of this effort?
This seems to support Stranger’s point about the market value of academic economists.
What is meant by “bought by the state”? What is meant by “much more inclined to the market”? I am not an economist by profession, yet the subject interests me enough to give consideration to the market. If it is only legitimate to make points about the economy if you are an economist, then what is the point of this question?
Just because they are people who a certain group agrees with does not mean their award was not political. Also, there are different categories for the Nobel Prize. Barack Obama won the Peace Prize. He did not win any Nobel Prize for scientific contribution. I think the real question is, who cares who won some damn award? Are their ideas worthwhile or not?
I can’t name five economists I agree with who are intelligent and honest.
The answer to this question can be inferred from my answer to question 4.
The ideas of Keynes are the ideas that, while not in favor in academia, are nevertheless the foundations on which they build and have tried to improve. They seek to find ways in which a faulty premise can work.
Tenure is not so much a state decision as the decision of the school, even if it is a public institution. Also, the state needs money to “buy out” intellectuals. The problem is that as the state grows, its sources of money tend to thin out. More people in government means less people producing actual wealth. Wanna kill a nation real quick? Get everyone to take jobs in government. Where does the money for wages come from? You can’t pay higher taxes than the output of wages, after all. Even if everyone is taxed 90% of their wages, how does that money grow in order to pay the full wage?
In regards to human capital and the value of their PhD my point is simply that for a young economist going on the job market choosing an academic job over can be tens of thousands of dollars, especially if one is not coming from a top grad school. Nobody takes an academic job for the pay, which is why I’m not sure it makes sense to say that the state is buying intellectuals, if this were true one would expect to see salaries far higher than we see for academics. Now, it may well be true that the state does create demand for intellectuals where there wouldn’t otherwise be, but this doesn’t answer the question of why individual academics are likely to support the state.
Now, Lilburne and Eric raise good points about how those working for the state are likely to be more in favour of intervention, but there are two problems with this. It’s not necessarily true that all academics do work for the state, most universities have other sources of funds besides the money they receive from the government. Secondly, if this is true shouldn’t academics at B-schools and think tanks be considerably less in favour of state intervention than other economics.
Valject, my point about economists being inclined towards the market is that public opinion matters, when libertarians such as Hans Hoppe and Murray Rothbard discuss the corruption of the intellectuals they say that the state uses academics to control public opinion. Presumably if this were true, and given the importance of economics, one would expect the state to make a greater effort (however, they might do that) to ensure that economists are less free market than, say, sociologist, who nobody listens to. Yet the opposite true, economists come closer on average to libertarian views than any other discipline with groups such as Marxists and Post-Keynesians being shunned.
“closer on average” is not enough. “close” is beneficial to the State and not to markets.
There is sufficient economic science to make a compelling state for the unhampered market. As long as most economists acknowledge some beneficial interventions here and there, the State has won!
Marxists and Post-Keynesians are being shunned for what? Mises and Hayek? Not quite! Try other interventionist policies.
Anyhow, the State has power, but it is not God. You seem to be taking the view that if not all economists are die hard Statists, then this somehow proves that the State does not influence intellectuals. This is a little backwards.
