Thursday, February 11, 2016

Please, not different wrong things, but right things


Syll links to the BBC's Economic Rebellion where we read

Since the crash of 2008, university students around the world have been rebelling against how they are taught economics... Economics teaching, say its detractors, is too narrow, too focused on mathematical modelling and without real world applications.

The problem is not that students are being taught the wrong things. The problem is that teachers don't know the right things.

The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. Something similar is required today in economics.

Something similar is required today in economics.

1 comment:

The Arthurian said...

Steve Keen says it, too:
We are hostage to a dysfunctional monetary system, run by people who don’t understand how it works in the first place.