On the World
Observation / People's Economics
NEVATHIR
August 14, 2018
While there is little disagreement between well-established physics and popular physics, the same can not be said of people's economics. Partly due to vested interests that encourage mass deception, people's economics suffers misinformation and disinformation, similar to Keynes's critique of practical men, slaves of some defunct economist.
The situation is aggravated by significant transmission costs. Idealistic Stiglitzian Knowledge as a Global Public Good is compromised by costly search, disambiguation, verification, validation, etc. that few ordinary citizens are capable of accomplishing in real time even with computer aid and the Internet.
Compared with medicine, where market failures are prominent, people's economics suffers additional drawback due to lack of proper license mechanism for ideas, given people's preference for free speech. The power of medical decision sides with doctors, but economic deliberation is often commercial intellectual warfare with winners no better than randomly chosen representatives.
Central banks provided partial resolution with protected arrangement for expert manoeuvre. Automatic fiscal adjustments proved more reliable than political gridlock. However, regulatory facilities are hardly a rival of mass media in terms of attractiveness.
Trickle-down economics, Eurozone, Brexit, etc. are prime examples how people may be persuaded to gratuitously undermine their own interests and prospects. Powerlessness of economics expertise reinforces people's belief in economists' lies and deceit. Is it possible to transfer power from people's ignorance to economics adepts?
Lack of compulsory economics education compared with physics and mathematics is clearly a problem, exacerbated by normative indoctrination against positive understanding.
While experimentation and rational deduction together with iterative learning easily build up physics and mathematics common sense, economics is vastly harder to teach due to great complexity of modern economies, which suggests that successful compulsory economics education may benefit from early adoption and long-term progressive study.
On the other hand, mass media economics coverage needs to embrace detailed reference and evidence presentation for efficient public verification and validation to considerably lower transmission costs. Then economics expertise might stand a chance against misinformation and disinformation.
The economics profession was surprised how Eurozone was established against economic consensus, which says something about the gigantic gap between people's economics and economics expertise, or market failure for economics expertise, if appropriate.
The cost of damage to economy is often astronomical compared with the cost of building up sound economic management. It's clear which path is wise and sustainable.