People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by ppeetteerr on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:58PM (#17516487)

Economists rarely have a good solution to societal problems. They have good solutions for facilitating trade but offer nothing with respect to social norms, nationalistic sentiment, etc.

We all agree that economists are good at maximizing resource allocation. Sysops are good at maximizing hardware allocation but we should let them dictate national policy :)

Politics is about taking all of the science and all of the human components of administrating a country and merge them into an ideal outcome. Economics is just one part of a bigger picture.

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Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by dqpb on Thursday July 12, 2018 @01:07PM (#17516579)

I disagree that economists are good at maximizing resource allocation as they largely ignore externalities.

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Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by realitygrill on Thursday July 12, 2018 @02:57PM (#17517560)

but economists invented the term "externalities" and the analysis of such..

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Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard by ItsMe000001 on Thursday July 12, 2018 @04:11PM (#17518202)

How good are they, especially with dealing with the unknown unknowns to quote a famous contemporary American philosopher (/s)? Even for the known unknowns, they have to make assumptions to start somewhere. Yes, they create a lot of models for all kinds of stuff, and I'm sure all those models work out well.

I must say though that I have doubts about the parent's "they largely ignore externalities", I think that is too negative a claim.

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