A problem

Ray Bradbury said, ""

Saturday, May 28, 2005

I have a problem. I am studying economics, but almost no one knows what economics is, and most schools don't teach it.

You've probably had at least one course called "economics." Did it use equations? Then it wasn't economics. Did it refer to aggregates, "interest rates," variables, "inflation is a rise in the average level of prices," and "functions"? Then it wasn't economics. Were none of its statements referred back to the decisions and values of individuals and the pricing system? Then it wasn't economics.

For the past eight decades, what has been taught as economics, has been the same tired fallacies advanced since the first man crawled out of a cave, and which have been refuted constantly over the course of the two and a half centuries previous to the 20th. The fallacies of Keynes, Gesell, and the Mercantalists have gained authority, new disguises, and have wormed their way into every class on economics. Those classes have, for over three generations, produced people who are remarkably consistent in rejecting economics. Look at any paper, and you will see the results. Paul Krugman, for instance, perhaps the most famous economist alive (How many words have been written about him, versus Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams combined?), applying the broken window fallacy to 9/11 three days after the attack in the New York Times. The world is awash in bullshit made even more pernicious because it is the same bullshit our forefathers died fighting against.

I cannot stand another dose of pseudo-mathematical voodoo masquerading as economics. I am close to strangling the next person who talks about the "consumption function" with a serious face. If I see one more spurious non-mathematical equation drawn on a chalk board, I will beat someone unconscious with his own foot. I have had enough of it.

Understandably, this narrows down considerably my choices for continuing my college education. Canisius has nothing more to offer me. An ivy league education in bullshit, would still be bullshit, as would a cheap and affordable education in bad economics. Harvard, the London School of Economics, Yale- all offer the same pap that their students 120 years ago learned to refute. I cannot and will not spend another 6 years and over $100,000 imbibing bullshit. So far as I know, only a handful of schools teach real economics- George Mason University and Aurburn University, for instance.

I must learn economics. I will throw aside everything else to learn it. I would prefer to study it in a formal environment, under the tutelage of a real economist, but I would be equally able to abandon formal education and teach myself, as I have been doing on my own time. This summer, I must decide. If I choose the former, I will be lucky to find a real economics course and luckier still if I can get into it. If I choose the latter, my student loans will become due in four months, and I will have to spend the next several years working as hard as possible to pay them off and studying as fast as possible. This decision is a tough one, made more difficult by the shortness of time left to me. I have spent 20 years on this earth, and only have about 60 years of useful life ahead of me. I have no more time to learn the fallacies which I am to refute. I have no more time to learn what a sick, diseased body looks like; I must learn what health looks like. Both time and my patience are short.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 28, 2005 19:20 EST | Permalink | comments (11) |
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Comments:

#1 29 May 2005 - 01:26

With all due respect, I think that Mason would be better than Auburn. Isn't Walter Williams still teaching at George Mason? Auburn is really in the sticks.

Anonymous

#2 29 May 2005 - 03:43

OT, but having read some of your pre-move posts, imbibing bullshit might be more nourishing that the other stuff you eat...:)

but, seriously, good luck in finding a school that teaches what you want to know.

moehawk

#3 29 May 2005 - 05:17

Welcome to the crossroads. A certain (small)percentage of us realize at some point that most of what they teach as "knowledge" in college and grad school of any variety is garbage which has nothing whatsoever to do with the realities of life. Unfortunately, you live in a society which is preoccupied with "qualifications" which it equates with "academic attainments". In other words, to be taken seriously, especially at the entrance level, you must have degrees conferred by institutions run and staffed primarily by people who've never done one damn thing in life but run and staff institutions. Some of the dumbest, most ignorant people I've ever met or heard of have real impressive-looking college degrees. On the other hand, I've run across some "uneducated" folks who are intelligent, observant, and well-informed and have a much better grip on reality than the ignorant parrots churned out by colleges. I call it "jumping through hoops", and I just had this conversation with a younger co-worker who has gone back to school for an advanced degree a few days ago. She has suddenly realized that most of the professors have never had a real job, and most of college is sitting around contemplating the meaning of belly-button lint. Well, you gotta jump through the hoops, whether hoop-jumping is really a necessary skill or not. So stay in school, continue your own studies on the side, and get your degree(s). You'll need 'em if you want the OPPORTUNITY to make an impact in the field. And here's a parting thought that I think you'll appreciate: the better you understand the bullshit, the better you can explain to others why it is bullshit.

GeoBandy

#4 29 May 2005 - 13:15

GeoBandy

I have had enough of the fallacies. I can get no more benefit from being exposed to the complex fallacies which are logically implied by and inherent within the simple fallacies. Every minute spent refuting a fallacy is one not spent learning something true. Imagine if it was any other field. Learning the false has its place, when it is taught as such, but eventually one must learn the truth. Learning the false, the sick, when taught as the healthy and the true, is vastly more pernicious, but the same result occurs: the opportunity cost of spending one minute learning the false is spending one minute learning a truth. Would you advocate that a medical student spend his entire education learning voodoo, incantatations, demonology, and trepination? That a medical student spend his entire education studying disease, and never study health? That an engineer spend even a small portion of his education learning magic? That a mathematician be exposed only to errors?

I have had enough of the disease passed off as health, the lies passed off as truth. I cannot learn actual economics by studying, even for refutation, the Keynesian crap that is passed off as it.

"Passing through hoops" means nothing to me. Imagine if the situation was in any other field. What would a prestigious MD mean to a man who spent 12 years of his life studying voodoo, at the expense of learning real medicine, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and his youth? What opportunities would such a worthless education open up? Either I get a degree in real economics, or no degree at all.

Pooklekufr

#5 30 May 2005 - 10:15

Sorry Hans Sennholz isn't still teaching...that guy knows his stuff (at least I thought so)...I had him for economics at Grove City in '76...check out his website...www.sennholz.com...maybe he could point you at something...

Makrothumeo

#6 30 May 2005 - 19:53

I've gotten to visit Auburn, and yeah, it's pretty well in the sticks. Beautiful campus though, and if you like college football, it's a great place.

Not sure if economists will take you seriously if you pick up the accent, though :-)

Anonymous

#7 30 May 2005 - 23:59

Tom...I think you should do Auburn, no question. I believe it might up your chances of getting into Mises University, which I am sure you have considered.

Hell even if you otherwise forsake school, you should try to get into Mises U.

Anonymous

#8 31 May 2005 - 07:45

Weird, pretty much the same thing you're feeling is what I'm feeling about all the "American Cultures" crap I'm reading in school. History works much the same way, except it's more about disctorting things and misinterpretation. Everyone has an opinion, you can't avoid it. The more intelligent one is, the more someone will think about something, and thinking adds a lot of stuff. It is good to do this if you publish your thoughts telling readers opinions have been added. But when you add this to textbooks all hell breaks loose. I'm sick of the goddamn shit that pours out of the school books when I read them. Everything from the beginning to the end. One pattern I see is that everything needed for the U.S. is there, that it is a near-perfect place, that everything done in the past that continues today is good, but that which is no longer is bad. Every decision that is still upheld today is somehow therefore the best decision. The result, you get millions of kids blindly thinking that their country is better than anyone else in every single way. Think about what school textbooks say about all the wars, the industrial revolutions, the Progressive Era, the Depression, the Cold War, and the present. These books rarely rely on the most recent ways of thinking. Usually they are just what people thought 10 years before the publication.
Scriptor

Anonymous

#9 01 June 2005 - 23:31

You know the best thing about the accent is that everyone thinks that you are stupid. It allows for an esy position from which to launch that cunning attack. And Southeastern Conference football is the best in the nation.

Anonymous

#10 12 June 2005 - 14:03

Not having the slightest inters test in economics personally, I am a photography/anthropology major, I have to wonder it what you are looking for would not be better found in Europe? I mean theoretical econ and practical econ are two different things.
It does seem that the, supposedly, top programs would be too in too liberal an environment for you.

You seem way too intense for your age.

Anonymous

#11 12 December 2005 - 18:45

My college teaches good economics. Grove City College teaches praxeological economics.

It is a small competitive college (about 2400 students). They only accept a little more than quarter of the people who apply.

Anonymous

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A problem

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 28, 2005 19:20 EST | Permalink | comments (11) |
economics, scruffy college student life, best posts
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A problem

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 28, 2005 19:20 EST | Permalink | comments (11) | postCountTB('458130'); economics, scruffy college student life, best postsComments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

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Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 28, 2005 19:20 EST | Permalink | comments (11) |
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