One word I have been banishing from economics pages is "modern". It's kind of ridiculous, in most countries you have a Marxist, Keynesian, monetarist and perhaps other analyses battling it out in the political sphere. Considering that economics is a SOCIAL science and not a real science, it seems to me the idea that say Milton Friedman's ideas are "modern" and Keynes (and his followers like Paul Krugman) and Marx (and his followers like the Monthly Review) are old-hat, classical, outdated and so forth seems to be slightly POV. Post-Galileo, most people will agree to a consensus on real sciences like astronomy, but a social science like economics will always be fraught with different camps as long as economic classes exist, and implying that economics is more like a science (once they dropped the word political from political economy and added the -ics), and that the ideas of Milton Friedman financed by the idle classes are "modern", and that Keynesian or Marxian ideas supported by many workers are outdated in some manner doesn't seem to fit. -- Lancemurdoch 04:19, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
There is a clear dividing line between economics in the 19th century, which based its practice in description, and the modern view which takes economics to be mathematically based - which is not to say scientific or not. This difference is primary, and not based on monetarism versus Keynesian theory. The basis of economics as the choice between scarce outcomes is something which no school of market economics seriously disputes. Now what, exactly, is scarce, and what the fundamental scarcities are, is open to enormous dispute, but "a form" is both vague and does not correctly capture that the overwhelming consensus among practicing economists is for the definition offered, which, literally, heads just about every text book on economics currently published.
This differs strongly from the 19th century defintions of political economy, which treated the subject as based in description of human activity - even if the ultimate subject of choices between mutually exclusive outcomes was the central question of the work.
I am all in favor of not piling on wasted adjectives which only serve to advance one particular view over others, but here, the word modern is used in its absolutely proper sense as the current tradition and theory of a discipline, and not being attached to a particular school, though I did note in the definition that it was modern market economics - that is all schools of economics centered on the operation of markets.
changing it back, there was no NPOV violation here.
Marxist economic theory asserts that each historical era has a unique "dialectical" tension that is determined by that society's "relations of production" (who owns what, who does what, and who receives what), relations that constitutes that societies economic structure. Analysis of any economic system must, according to Marx, be done within the framework of its relations of production, and the dialectical tension that this creates. mydogategodshat 06:16, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I'm probably more familiar with Marx than the average person here and I have no idea of what dialectic means (Noam Chomsky says he has no idea what that word means as well, not for lack of trying to find out).
On the other hand I totally agree about the relations of production. To those not steeped in Marxian economics: the idea is that a commodity undergoes three phases - production, exchange and consumption. That people like Milton Friedman are focused on exchange, and to a lesser extent consumption, and to a large extent ignore production, is seen as ideological. The classical economists like Smith and Ricardo considered these now sort of verboten topics, as did Marx, in depth, but in the 21st century, among the economists employed by people who can afford to employ economists, "the laws which regulate the distribution of the produce of the earth" as Ricardo put it, hold little interest, and focus is on exchange (trade) and price, and to a lesser extent use and consumption.
Really, the problem is that in a Marxian, or perhaps even Ricardian sense, the feeling is that the focus is too narrow, and especially virtually ignores production.
As far as mathematics, well I can think of no better way to ignore a social relationship in a social science than mathematics. Marx saw economic systems of different eras like slavery, feudalism, capitalism. One could calculate how much cottons slaves picked, how much a slave cost to capture, ship, feed, breed. How much the slave cost at an auction, how many square meters of cotton a slave picked a day, what the price of cotton was, how it was traded to Britain which helped in its industrial revolution in textiles, how Eli Whitney's cotton gin increased slave productivity and the master's profits and so forth if one look over the account books of an American slavemaster's accountants books of 140 years ago. But all of that economic data, in the social science of political economy, would not explain some important relations of production. In fact, Haiti's slaves rose up and killed off their masters not long after the American revolution, which changed the economic system being studied.
I am not obsessed with adjectives, I, and many others, just don't like how this social science is portrayed as more like physics than literary theory, how theories favoring the rich are called "modern" while ones favoring workers are "old, outdated" and whatnot, and how the field of economics has been narrowed significantly since even bougeois liberals like Adam Smith began studying political economy. In my mind, narrowing economics to a narrow mathematical study of price at the point of exchange is inherently ideological. -- Lancemurdoch 09:45, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
This is some very good and productive discussion, and I'd like to first thank everyone for taking the time to elucidate where they are going.
I think the first of Lance's concerns - on "social science" itself - is best dealt with on that page. I've started a rather longish essay on the history of the modern concept, and welcome expansions and additions, particularly in areas involving the still controversial role of the idea. Economics isn't the place to fight this particular battle except by reference.
Dialectic - dialectic is actually a simple concept in Marx. There is the means of production, there is the ability to control the relationships that make up those means of production. Consciousness is the ability to create the relationships that run production. So if you can take a group of people, drop them someplace, and they can, for example, start a factory, then they have sufficient "consciousness" to run a factory. If a society has sufficient consciousness to run the production it is based on, then it possesses the "objective" means of producition. Basically, there is being able to do something, and there is the ability to organize it.
Dialect then is the process by which classes come to consciousness of production, and the struggle to control production once they do. The dominant class at an given time can be defined as the class "the people who know what the fuck they are doing". Against them are struggling people who actually are doing it, but don't know how to do it themselves.
To Marx then, history is a series of struggles, in each case the dominant class is overthrown by a new class that figures out how to produce and then says "what do we need these bums for?"
We then get into his analysis of profit and why surplus value is distributed more widely etc etc etc. But Dialectic is not, itself, problematic as a concept.
Production and Consumption I think Lance has hit on a core problem here: most critiques of current practice, both within and outside the field, center on what economics calls "value", which is another way of saying "underlying realities of production" and over "decision" which is another way of saying underlying psychology of consumption. Perhaps we can organize material which allows a general summary of these critiques - giving broad reference to all of the major work being done, that we know of - that centers around these and finding a place to put them. Again, economics doesn't seem to be the place, and instead, these questions seem to be about framing economics - where it fits in the general scheme of knowledge. Political Economy is the subject where more of this fits, since production issues are crucial to policy.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to work through this, I am very confident we can produce a final article which hits the mark and broadens, rather than narrows, the focus. For myself I am going to concentrate on economic modelling and the mathematics, simply because it is something everyone ought to know, and wiki is rather short on good explanations. People need to know what it is economics is "really" about, in terms of what it does, before they can start sorting the real critiques from the rants of cranks.
Especially because there are enough cranks on the internet to deal with.
I agree that the fundamental assumptions of economics are very important to include in our articles. It is always difficult to know where to put content as broad and as fundamental as value theory. There is an interesting article at Anthropological theories of value which still need some work, and there is a section of the Wealth article Wealth#The Anthropological view of Wealth that goes into these issues somewhat. There is also Economic anthropology which is a mere stub (and not a very good one).
Looked at it, it is basically what I call a "But But But!" page, which references a critique of the mainstream view without exploring it, and provides a link to some yet more minority position. To integrate it means really giving a good exigesis of the views of anthropology with respect to wealth - which go a lot farther than an anthropological critique of economics - and finding places to link with economics, sociology etc. etc. More work - fun fun fun. I'm going to focus on doing a section on the basic math of mainstream economics (supply and demand curves!) and continuing with the political economy section creating links into as many other disciplines as possible so that people will be able to get a sense of how all of this holds together. But back to that evil original research stuff for the time being. Stirling Newberry 19:11, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
As for dialectic, this is a term Marx borrowed from Hegel. He took Hegel's system of historical change (thesis, antisythesis, and synthesis, ultimately culminating in the Ideal) and applied it to the means of production. mydogategodshat 16:25, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
And Hegel borrowed from Aristotle. Marx' use of the term, while it is in the Hegelian tradtion is different in key ways. For Hegel the dialectic was an expression of metaphysical reality. For Marx, it is rooted in the struggle over the objective means of production. hence "Materialist Dialectic".
Yes, from Aristotle he borrowed the notion of a teleological flow of history. mydogategodshat 16:25, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
By the way,the concept of "a final article" is one that we all learn to abandon here at Wikipedia. No sooner than you get an article just the way you want it, and someone will make changes to it. Colaborative authorship is an amazing process to see in action: It can be maddening too. mydogategodshat 02:07, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
As for final, on a subject like Economics - probably not. But getting to an island of stabilty would be nice, so that we can drill down deeper into the sub areas of economics - many of which are stubs or paraphrases of the definition. Marx is, of course, going to be problematic, especially since there is on overwhelming USA bias to contributors, and Marx is viewed differently in Europe than in the US. There he is more or less a classical labor theory of value economist who studies production. Here he's a satan against what is held dear. Hence there are always going to be "corrections" which represent the, well, libertarian leaning, consensus of internet Americans.
What I hope we can avoid is crude slapshots, these always come across badly, and don't present the case for a particular POV well, which is what NPOV writing should be aiming for: give everyone their best case, and let original research and the reader sort it out.
Another thing is that I think as far as mainstream or whatever to ask who is paying the bills. For example, Stephen Roach is a Morgan Stanley economist studying the "relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Now imagine he did analysis and said one day to his boss "I think the drive for profit is creating inefficiency in matching scarce resources to their uses of highest utility, my analsis shows eliminating shareholders, prodit, dividends, rent, and interest, and handing over the companies, offices and factories to the people who work in them will have a better result". What would happen? He would be fired. Economists employed by the AFL-CIO come to different conclusions than ones employed by the US Chamber of Commerce, and the fact that the Chamber of Commerce can afford to employ more economists to forward their ideas doesn't make what they're saying any more true. -- Lancemurdoch 09:45, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Roach has in fact said that. Econospeak is "market inefficiency due to insufficiently transparent flow of information" - id est fraud - and "market misallocation of resources due to temporary price anomolies" - id est "people were stupid enough to buy CMGi at 104, so who am I not to sell it to them?" and "distributed costs of capital accumulation" - id est "having a lot of poor people so that we can have more billionaires has got to lead to something bad at some point." - and "low probability high consequence events" - id est "we know that catastrophe is going to strike sometime, we can't price it, so the best thing to do is hope you are out of the market before it happens." A good deal of solid work has been done which points to why smooth statistical models don't see these rather obvious real world consequences, and ways of looking at them, mathematically, are coming into being see complexity etc.
While this isn't, yet, a consensus viewpoint, looking at the recent list of Nobel prize winners would suggest that the discipline is piling up counterexamples to the neo-classical consensus and we should document that. For the rest, that is under the heading of "original research" - which is where I need to be getting back to at the moment.
Thanks again, this has been very productive, and I hope this core can hack out the issues we have and produce some high quality work.
I think that can be understood without having previous knowledge of Marxist thought. Maybe someone not familiar with Marxist economics can tell us if this is clear to them. mydogategodshat 07:06, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
We really need an equation editor. This subject needs to have at least the simple equations laid out.
Some topics I think would be worthwhile (off the top of my head):
Off the top of my head though - I might come back to do some of them if I've got the time. Haven't really thought about most of this stuff for a few years now ...
C
Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity.
I think the point of economics is to create those verbose definitions. It's not just "choice under scarcity" but also the NATURE of choice, the NATURE of scarcity. The Fundamentals section is good but has to make this clearer, and come up front.
The first sentence has no verb: "Economics (formally known as political economy) the governance of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and the various related problems of scarcity, finance, debt, taxation, labor, law, inequity, poverty, pollution, war, etc. " ...I am going to insert the word studies for now. Feel free to fix it differently. Kingturtle 04:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
A problem with this definition is that it is simply wrong to say that what passes for economics today includes all the studies formerly (and now in parallel) known as political economy. While there is consensus on one concept of technical economics and its methods, and on capital types, the latter has yet to be completely integrated into monetary policy, fiscal policy, accounting and such - thus there are well-defined packages of accounting reform and monetary reform that seem to have no valid reasons NOT to happen, other than the fact that someone benefits from the inertia and failure to do so. In the 20th century this exact situation led to two very nasty wars, and a third nasty confrontation over economic systems, that between them, have characterized the whole global polity and most moves towards world government. Accordingly, we are obligated to present economics in its full depth, and with its full impact on human society, and the present page simply does not do that adequately.
Hell, we're talking about distribution potentially of air, water, and food here. Hard to get more important than that.
Controversy over Economics
Removed:
There is very great controversy about how supply and demand questions, ethics questions, and ecology interact to restrict and frame economic questions. These questions are usually dealt with in the field called political economy.
The article on economic choice deals with what constitutes an economic, rather than a moral, political, or personal type of choice.
I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to stress that there is substational information about alternative and in many cases obscure approaches to economics on Wikipedia. In fact, the alternatives are overall given more attention than mainstream economics in a variety of articles. The problem with the article on economics has always been that it has tended to be dominated by people who dislike the subject. I'm fine with criticism of economics, but the subject should first be given a clean, uninterrupted presentation, just like all the alternatives (green economics, natural capitalism and what have you). -- Galizia
While there is an admirable set of articles on a lot of important questions like value of Earth (one way to assess economics is whether it values the things that humans actually value), the idea that this is somehow "given mroe attention" is just not true. The few such topics covered are absolutely basic, and even essentials like ecological yield were only covered recently.
If anything the material overall is still balanced towards the neoclassical view you wrongly call "mainstream", which is by no means accepted or acceptable in pure form in most forums outside the US. In the UK all economists must learn Marxist economics and the Marxist critique of capitalism. Joseph Alois Schumpeter is covered, etc..
But test what you say another way: If what you say were true, there would be articles on the vast fields of labour economics and welfare economics which have been leading even to Swedish Bank Prizes lately (Amartya Sen the most obvious example). There'd be attention paid to labour theory of value and labor theory of value being about the same thing, and, there'd be discussion of David Ricardo as having founded that theory, not just a firm politicized dismissal. These errors aren't corrected, so if anything that shows systematic bias against the less quantitative and technical economics.
Everyone dislikes scarcity. But it is not just dislike that drives most criticism, it's a basic belief that economics assesses scarcity falsely and thus its basic constructs are irrelevant - there is no such thing as a commodity and no such thing as a product and no such thing as supply and no such thing as demand.
Of course there is not any such thing. There is also no such thing as a person, no such thing as a light bulb, no such thing as a tree. But we have words for them because we find the concepts useful. Supply is a useful concept, demand is a useful concept, and concept of supply and the concept of demand exists (maybe not in your mind, but certainly in mine). Unless you are interested only in the philosophical concept of nihlism, stateing that they don't exist is not productive. All models are false, and we precieve the world by making models of it, so you can take the extreme view that everything that we precieve is false. Many of the models of economics are useful, as in they are true enough that they can be used some of the time. You just have to understand that what you have is a model, and then decide, is this the right model? Supply and demand is a fairly good model for wheat but a lossy model for love. Most of the ideas that have been thought of for economics in the past hundred years have been to figure out where the failings of economics is and then incorporate that into a new model. Explain exactly where the models of economics fails and you may have something useful, claiming that they fail in general is completly true and completely useless. Jrincayc 16:24, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You only believe in these things if you are taught to take a God's eye view of them. The "alternative" position is that quantifications applied in the contracts on commodity markets etc., are simply based on nothing, utterly ungrounded in anything but the authority that writes and enforces them. What is a "soybean" when there are breeding, genetic manipulation, pesticide use, and other comprehensive outcome differences that really and truly matter even to the consumer but aren't reflected in the numbers? There have been street protests by economics students in Europe on this grounds - that what they are taught is pure nonsense. No one believes, for instance, that GDP has any valid economic basis whatsoever. There is NO argument for that - its creators argue that it is not relevant for the purposes politicians and bankers use it for.
Yes, GDP has some severe problems. For example, I take care of my kid, no contribution to GDP. I pay some body else to take care of my kid, contribution to GDP, even if they do a worse job. Similarly, I have to buy a lock for my door, contribution to GDP. I can leave my door unlocked and don't need to buy a lock, no contribution to GDP. I am open to suggestions for a better measure. Maybe next time you come, you could work on writing well researched NPOV articles about Genuine Progress Indicator or Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare that do try to be more accurate measures. Jrincayc 16:35, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There are no more "alternatives", if you look at the discourse taking place at the UN and even at the World Bank, it is a question of deciding which of the ecology-driven approaches is the "mainstream"... the term natural capital for instance is now in wide use at both institutions.
Also, look at the lack of detailed articles on subjects such as those linked from market system - there is no detailed discussion of how an energy market differs from a debt market for instance, or even what collateral is. So the neoclassical assumptions that all contracts for all services are equally commodifiable, and that perfect competition assumptions can apply to imperfect/real situations of unequally distributed power, are both being baldly accepted. Else "we" would surely "need", and "have", articles on these detailed differences.
As it is such considerations are ghetto-ized in separate articles on energy economics that don't have the detail on how the energy trading mechanics of the real world actually work. This doesn't mean that energy economics is "alternative", it means that the impact of energy on the rest of economics has been censored/ignored. It means that energy has been treated as if it were no different than any other "commodity' - but of course "we" don't seen to be starting any foreign wars for control of oh say soybeans... nor putting trillion dollar budgets together for military devices that burn solar power... These issues dominate the political economy today, so it's pretty clear that economics articles that pretend these things are just part of some "free market" where people are making voluntary choices, is idiotic at worst, and ideological at best. User:EntmootsOfTrolls
EntmootsOfTrolls, I think that you could make some valuable contributions. Unfortunately, your behaviour overshadows your contributions. For example, the comments about economics are helpful to me to see where you are coming from (even if I disagree with quite a few of them). On the other hand (I'm an economist, so I have to say this), your removeal of the comment from Cyan and your combative strategy don't help things. I will gladly post any well researched, NPOV, GFDL articles that you email me that are appropriate material for an encyclopedia and will attribute them to you (I would love to see a good article on the World3 model (from Limits to Growth) and good articles on alternative measures to GDP and the problems with GDP). Since you claim that your banning was unfair, I am also willing to read your reason why you believe this. Good Day. Jrincayc 16:57, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dealing with the impact of energy on economics is certainly worth treatment, but then, this is an area where I have some degree of expertise. Wiki's not paper, we can cover the emerging ideas in xaos theory and scarcity which a more staid publication could not. I'd like to open a discussion on how to do this, without distracting from the presentation of the status quo, which, after all, is what people go to an encyclopedia for.
I would be very interested in an article on chaos theory in economics if you can write one. The only thing to beware of is you can't get too close to the edge. If you do someone will delete the page claiming that it is primary research. They believe we should restrict our articles to well established knowledge. mydogategodshat 02:28, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I think we could at least write a stub which points to its existence, references some of the work being done, and go from there. For reference, I am currently at work on a book entitled The Fourth Republic which argues that there is a visible relationship between the basis of monetary exchange systems and constitutional law in the US, and it makes use of a certain amount of both xaos theory and political economy versus economic theory. A careful and reasonable presentation of the conflicts within economics, as well as a solid presentation of economic thinking itself, is, I believe, useful, because if done properly, it will give people an idea not merely of what is, but the directions that are being pointed to for the future. Stirling Newberry 18:28, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The following material removed from the article
Economic Theory As A Degenerate Science
Steve Keen a senior lecturer in economics in the University of Western Sydney claims in his book "debunking economics" that current mainstream economic theory is a degenerate science closer to the field of astrology than the field of astronomy.
Keen argues that the very mathematical foundation of economics is flawed. While the theory of supply and demand is correct, the mathematics is used incorrectly in the basic foundation of economics.
In particular, the supply and demand graphs shows two straight lines intersecting each other. The point where the straight upward slooping supply line intersect the downward slooping demand line is where the economic exchange is suppose to take place.
The problem as immediately spotted by physicists, mathematicians and engineers is that in real life, lines representing natural phenomena is never a straight line but curves.
Keen says, the market demand curve can’t be smooth – at best it’s jagged, going up and down with price – while the supply "curve" is at best a horizontal line which probably slopes down rather than up.
(This guy Keen is a quack. He is claiming that firms will want to produce more product when price (and profits) goes down and they will want to produce less when selling price (and profits) goes up! He also claims the demand curve rises in places. For this to happen the income effect would have to be greater than the substitution effect and there is very little empirical evidence to support this (see here for an explanation). What actually happens is that the demand curve falls at varying rates (see here). mydogategodshat 11:25, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC) )
If the supply and demand graphs are calculated properly with actual curved supply and demand lines, then an amazing solution may occur. The supply curve may intersect the demand curve at multiple points. That is to say that there may be multiple solutions or points of stability (known as attractors).
Conscious that he might be dismissed as a ranting marginalised lunatic, Keen says his arguments are not based on ideologies, but on mathematics.
Keen says, most introductory economics textbooks present a sanitised, uncritical rendition of conventional economic theory, and the courses in which these textbooks are used do little to counter this mendacious presentation. Students might learn that "externalities" reduce the efficiency of the market mechanism but they will not learn that the "proof" that markets are efficient is itself flawed.
The minority which continues on to further academic training is taught the complicated techniques of economic analysis, with little to no discussions of whether these techniques are actually intellectually valid. The enormous critical literature is simply left out of advanced courses while glaring logical shortcomings are glossed over with specious assumptions. However, most students accept these assumptions because their training leaves them both insufficiently literate and insufficiently numerate.
Equilibrium, he says, has become a religion – anything which is non market is not as good as anything which is market, therefore every move we make towards market will make us better, so it’s an ideology not a reality.
The reality is that the market doesn’t work in equilibrium and that’s the thing that economists can’t comprehend. They are stuck in a 19th century mathematical world, where everything works in equilibrium and they can’t cope with anything other than that.
The main problem I have with this material is that it is not a critique of economics. It is a critque of the simplifing assumptions used in first year economics to make difficult concepts easier for new students to understand. It is true that in first year economics curves are linear, there is no mention of multiple equilibria, all supply curves slope upwards to the right, and there are many assumptions made that are not critically assessed. But when you go beyond first year, these simplifying assumptions are relaxed. Demand curves have price points. It is possible to have a downward sloping to the right supply curve, but only in very resticted situations (only industry supply curves, not individual; only in the long run, not in the short run; and only when the long run average cost curve is decining over all relevent output levels). There are instances of multiple equilibria (labour markets and foriegn trade markets).
This article needs a "Criticisms" section, but this is not it.
mydogategodshat 21:22, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The one valuable point made by this contributor is that economist generally do not adequately assess the fundamental assumptions upon which models are built. mydogategodshat 21:34, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Mydogate, for putting this in talk. Wikipedia managed to become very slow for me right before I had to leave for work. I think Steve Keen has some points, but I think he is exaggerating when he states that economics as a whole is degenerate. I don't think that the critque should go on the front economics section, but I think either an article on Steve Keen, or on problems with typical economic assumptions would be fine to create as a separate article. Jrincayc 03:06, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Agreed, I would like to see both a short "criticisms" section in this article and also full length articles on the topics. My problem is not with the topics but with the content. I am not familiar with Keens work, but I doubt if this material is an accurate representation of it. Maybe someone that is familiar with Keens could paste this material to a new article and fix it.mydogategodshat 04:12, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Added "Critics" to the "Also See" section. Added Steve_Keen as a link to a separate wiki page. - drnobody
Thanks for the link to Keen's web site. I checked out some of his articles. I particularly liked the way he critiqued infiniticimal output here [1]. I think I will read some of his stuff in detail when I have the time. mydogategodshat 23:36, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
---
Quotes from above:
"Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity. "
"I think the point of economics is to create those verbose definitions. It's not just "choice under scarcity" but also the NATURE of choice, the NATURE of scarcity. The Fundamentals section is good but has to make this clearer, and come up front. "
Quote 1 is incorrect, choice has little to do with trade and everything to do with scarcity. Choice occurs directly because of scarcity, since if I had everything i wanted (no scarcity) then I would no longer need to *choose* between alternatives. To go further, choice is usually considered a 1 person exercise while trade is at least 2, or more.
I glaced over the article and I see that a lot of stuff in political economy isn't included in here and could, and should, be moved over. --ShaunMacPherson 13:00, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
---
A quote:
"Economics explicitly does not deal with free abundant inputs -"
I am not sure if this sentence is correct, but at the very least the term 'abundant' is incorrect. The opposite of scarce (finite) is not 'abundant' but closer to limitless / infinite.
As for free, economics looks at free inputs all the time, sun, air are usually considered 'free' for the taking. As well as pure public goods are necessarily 'free goods', usually paid for by tax however, because no market can exist for a pure public good (i.e. national defense).
[edit]Economics is a social science that studies human resource making activity. Humans make resources to support their life. Human life on this Earth needs supply. The three basic supply, food, clothing and housing then a wide variety other goods, products and services. The supply, these resources is made in the economy of a society. Economics studies how the economy works. How the products, goods and serives are made, traded and distributed.
Maybe this was written by a non-english writer, but I have to challenge some of the terminology. Generally in economics, resources are things that are used rather than made. Also to say that economics studies how things are made is misleading. The study of how things are made is industrial engineering. Economics studies how things are made only in the very restricted sense of how scarce resources are allocated in a production process. I do however agree tautologically that "economics studies how the economy works". :)
I could as well just edit it, but I'd guess editing wars are frowned upon. So I'm new around here, and, as a non-logged in user, I made some minor changes to the article, most notably in the definitions of microeconomics and macroeconomics. The phrase "which constructs economic phenomena from the behavior of individual actors and firms" was changed to "which constructs economic behavior from the behavior of individual actors and firms" - which makes no sense.
Previously, the page said something about "microeconomics studying the behavior of individual actors", which would rule general equilibrium theory out.
I'm thinking of "Microeconomics builds a theory of economics phenomena starting from its microfoundations - the behaviour of individual families and firms". Somehow, it seems the word "phenomena" is frowned upon, but it's really precisely what I mean here - see phenomenology.
If the talk pages don't show any activity on this in a few hours, I'll edit it again. The old version was imprecise, and the version which replaced mine makes no sense.
I have introduced a definition of microeconomics that mirors the logical structure of the macroeconomics definition. mydogategodshat 01:00, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Your statement that general equalibrium is not macroeconomics is interesting. There is no doubt that gen equl is microeconomics. But this is not the same as claiming that it is not macroeconomics. It certainly deals with macroeconomic topics, even though it is built using microeconomic techniques.mydogategodshat 01:10, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
More Capitalism
I am a "newbie" so you can take what I have to say with however much salt you care to.
I was startled, first of all, to find that the word "capitalism" is nowhere actually mentioned in the body of Wikipedia's Economy citation (except in the reference list at the bottom). Capitalism seems instead to have the status of a subcategory in the Business citation. Marxist, Marxism, Marxian, Karl Marx, on the other hand /are/ cited, some more than once.
Whatever happened to good old capitalism guys?
Stirling Newberry Most of the article is a discussion of capitalist economics - starting with Smith, Ricardo, moving through Marshall and Keynes, with some references to later work. However it is worth pointing out the difference between market and capitalism - the two are not the same, and emphasizing that economics is focused primarily on capitalist markets, and to a lesser extent socialist ones.
The authors seem to have carried NPOV to a new and near pathological extreme, as though in an article on psychotherapy, Freud had been banished to the Medicine category and the text was chock full of Jungian philosophy.
Stirling Newberry I think this statement is a bit extreme and insulting.
Your article seems more of a battleground than a source of information on Economics aimed at someone that actually wants to know how it is practised in the world as we know it. Last I looked capitalism was /the/ major economic system on the planet and the End of History was nigh. No problem with discussing its shortcomings but shouldn't one at least mention it?
Stirling Newberry And this one definitely is. The article goes into great detail about the primary activity of economists - making models, collecting data and using supply and demand curves with measurable variables to understand collective behavior.
Wgoetsch 22Mar04
As much as I like salt, particularly with french frys, I have to admit that "newbies" can add a perspective that "long timers" miss, and in this instance I agree with user:wgoetsch in some regards. Wikipedia articles do tend to be idiological battlegrounds with everyone adding a paragraph on their particular school of thought. And I agree that there is no economics in this article. There is little in this article about WHAT economists do or HOW they do it. This is not an economics article and is not intended to be one, from what I can see. Instead, it is an overview of economic concepts as seen by various economic schools of thought and branches of economics. I have no problem with this because Wikipedia does have many good economics articles. See for example welfare economics, supply and demand, production theory, consumer theory, labour economics. These articles however, are of less interest to the general public. Labour economics for example has been a candidate for featured article status for several weeks, but it is not being voted for, presumably because so few Wikipedians are interested in "hard" economics.
You mentioned that capitalism was not mentioned in this article, so I added a bit.
"Missing Link" in the chapter 'Development of economic thought' by a reader from a Post-Communist country
2 April 2004
In our country we haven't had luck to have Ludwig von Mises or any other "Austrian Economist", who would understand topics that no one can understand without embracing "Economic Subjectivism" (see my refutation of its refutation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economic_subjectivism ) instead of "Economic Objectivism", and we experienced the hyperinflation similar to the German's hyperinflation in 1920's before the collapse of Communism in our country.
After that our economists have been luckily smart enough and didn't accept Monetarism (that was suggested by USA economists) which destroyed some Latino-American economies.
Here is something about "Austrian Economics" that I propose to be inserted after the paragraph on Marxism in the chapter Development of economic thought:
British "objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization inadvertedly led to the "double valuedness" of any object. Any product had two kinds of values at the same time (bread, for example, though higher in "use value" than diamonds, was somehow lower in "exchange value").
This very concept of 'double valuedness' enabled Marx to conceptualize market economy as internally contradictive economic system, a system badly misdirecting resources into "production for profit" (by exploatating the very difference between the "exchange value" and "use value") instead of directing resources (which then communist states did by central planning or by self-managed arrangements in communist Yugoslavia) for "production for use".
As can be seen, British economists' "objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization led to rise of the theory of capitalist exploitation of both natural resources and working class, while they did not deal with the same topics as Marx at all, such as money, capital or business cycles, there were at the same time Austrian economics (founded by Carl Menger who wrote his "Principles of Economics" at roughly the same time as Marx did his "Kapital"), which were first to clash directly with "double valuedess" approach.
Hyperinflation (which later destroyed German economy and made dissapointed German people quite eager to accept Adolf Hitler as their rescuer) was spared the Austrian country mainly due to this Austrian economics approach in 1920s led by Ludwig von Mises, who rejected "double valuedness".
With annexation of Austria by Germany and Nazi terror Ludwig von Mises emigrated to the United States. There, however, at a time when every communist and social democratic exile from Europe was given a high academic post, the leading Austrian economist Mises was refused such a job, even more, the dean of New York University's Graduate School of Business, Sawhill, has lobbied good students not to take Mises's 'right-wing, reactionary' classes. Neither Mises lived to see the fellow Austrain economist Friedrich Hayek wining the Nobel prize in 1974.
A reader from a Post-Communist country
P.S.
I'd like to appologize for my English. My writing in English language is not very good. I understand it very well, though.
Stirling Newberry All I can say is "are you joking?" the economics sections of Wikipedia lean very heavily towards the Austrian school, much more so than practicing economicsts. There is ample coverage - in some cases more than ample coverage - of Austrian concepts, links to mises and other liberatarian/austrian/"classical liberal" sites. The mainstream of economics is focused on mathematical modelling based on collection of data. The Austrian school is certainly part of the overall economic dialog and is referenced. If someone has specific concepts which are important that need to be included, by all means do so.
I find this bias a little puzzling myself.CSTAR 04:31, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Second paragraph: beliefs
Economists believe that incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in shaping decision making. Sometimes a preference relation can be represented by a utility function. Concepts from the Utilitarian school of philosophy are used as analytical concepts within economics, though economists appreciate that society may not adopt utilitarian objectives.
Could we get rid of Economists believe-- This reminds me of a church. Shouldn't this be something like:
From the distinctive point of view of economic analysis incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in decision making.
Also what meaning does the word "shaping" convey in the original version of the article? Wouldn't it be more informative to refer to a process of decision making (this I admit is idiosyntractic -- I believe in a process view human activity).
CSTAR16:52, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Good luck with it. I wonder if anyone will create: Economics: A Graphical and Intuitive Approach. Jrincayc 02:23, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Externalization
I need to reference an article or section that is not present, one that explains the means by which costs are externalized and the effects of this. Examples could be the externalization of health costs by the coal industry or the externalization of costs of defending, suppressing, and replacing countries and governments to ensure cheap motor fuels in the US. I could write something about this but it would not be from the viewpoint of an economics expert. Please notify me when this is available so that I can link to it. Thanks, Leonard G. 21:57, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I believe the phenomenon you're looking for is already discussed at externality. Isomorphic 23:35, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Adam Smith ain't a bad guy
But isn't this picture at the top completely misleading? Or am I just being too picky? CSTAR 01:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
No reason not to add pics of Ricardo and Marx. Any objections? Any other key figures mentioned in the intro that rate a picture? - David Gerard 10:20, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I added the pic from a position of almost total ignorance on this topic. Please do replace it with a more suitable one! (I wanted to give this article a shot at being featured). Lupin 11:15, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've just added pics of Ricardo and Marx as well - the three "main thinkers" listed in the intro. There's no pic for Alfred Marshall. I think it looks nice :-) What do you all think? - David Gerard 12:01, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The pictures are certainly better. It does look nice and avoids the impression of canonizing Adam Smith. But what about a picture of something like a supermarket checkout counter or a farmer's market or even the outside of large US discount retail store or even a French one (e.g. in Shenzhen) -- without the company logo (with a caption such as Globalization and the loss of jobs etc.)? CSTAR 13:52, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I see no reason not to have each of these things. A pic of a bazaar. A pic of a reasonably canonical economic graph (both to make a point and say "mathematics"). A pic of these three dudes (possibly shift them down to the "Development of economic thought" section). We must have a good, relevant and eye-candy graph around. Do we have a suitable pic of a market? - David Gerard 14:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A pic of a market at the top, dead white European males in "Development". Graph please, someone! - David Gerard 14:46, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Wow, quick on the bazaar picture. I'm sure a PD picture of one of the commodities markets or stock exchanges could be found or someone could go take them. The Chicago Board of Trade is open to public viewing [2] and the Mercantile exchange is too [3]. Pictures of those trading floors might be a good addition. - Taxman 14:51, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
Possibly valuable reverted edit
For about 34 minutes, someone replaced the beginning of the article with this:
Economics began as a study of exchange in the hands of Adam Smith. (See Whately 1832). But the neoclassical revolution turned it into a study of allocation (See Robbins 1932). The current orthodoxy or mainstream thinks of economics as a study of allocation. In it, an isolated individual optimally allocates some existing wealth.
The allocation model uses formal mathematics to derive theorems of how allocation decisions are made under any conceivable situation. Mathematicians who do not understand economics issues may do very well as builders of abstract models of all conceievable scenarios. The problem: these have no relevance to real life.
But optimization is not all. Economists also want to know how new wealth is created through entrepreneurship. Neoclassical economics is inherently incapable of dealing with entrepreneurship (see Baumol 1968), which is often counter-optimizing. It just does not know how to deal with collective decision. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem ([click here]) says that it is impossible to formulate a social decision. This is a confession that neoclassical economics does not know how to analyze group decisions. Since all market decisions are group decisions among buyer, sellers, and often also intermediaries, neoclassical economics is unable to say anything meaningful about the market or market events. But it pretends to know everything.
The allocation model is under serious challenge by several heterodox approaches such as the Marxian, the Austrian, the Institutionalist and the Keynesian approaches. Since June 2000, students in prestigious schools in France, England, USA and in many other countries have revolted against the percieved autism of neoclassical economics. (Visit www.paecon.net) So wait to see major changes in this article.
Some of that material may be valuable to work in. Much of it seems to be ripped from somewhere (The click here note gives a clue towards that). Also the warning at the end of major changes seems to be ignorant, purposely or not, of the collaborative editing process we have here. I thought the matrial was, at a minimum, worth discussion. - Taxman 15:09, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
It's heavily POV. If someone feels that a particular point of view is worth documenting - Austrian, Keynesian or otherwise - then they should do so. However, the graf as written is a manifesto without substance. There are plenty of challenges to neo-classical economics - from Game Theory, xaos theory, "Total Progress Indicator", Green economics, Marxism, Marxian, Austrian, Neo-Keynesian - and many of these have been documented in wiki. The material doesn't have substance behind it. It could have been written by a LaRouchite. Further, misreading a standard theorum (in this case Arrow's) is usually a dead give away of a POV without sufficient substantiation. Thanks for dropping it here so it is recorded, but it isn't wiki, it's his web site.Stirling Newberry 16:15, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What is the warning at the end of major changes? I was the one that reverted it the previous version. It is not clear if you are suggesting I made a major change in reverting and that I should have left it in the main article to discuss it? CSTAR 16:22, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
No, I'm only suggesting exactly what I did. Remove the heavily POV material to the talk page and discuss what of it has merit to go back in once it has been refactored. The material makes some good points and even provides references for some of it. Baumol 1968 might have valuable backing for the point the edit made, and he may have a good point about current orthodoxy focusing on allocation. I'm only suggesting that if there is even a chance that the material can add something to the article it should be brought to talk, not reverted without discussion. Leaving it in the article would keep the article from being NPOV, which is of course, not good. - Taxman 13:47, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
I agree that there should be further "interdisciplinary" discussion of alternative viewpoints. Some of the references in the "French section" are worth looking at, this even if some might cringe at a site which lists Bruno Latour as reference - the link fails, helas.(I have long since given up on poking fun at "post-modernists". Even though my original sympathies were with Sokal in that war, I think in the end the post-modernists got the last laugh and in the end who will be remembered -- Foucalt surely.). Robert Solow has a somewhat apologetic article in French and then there is this, from Ces merveilleux manuels américains
Tout le monde loue - pour leurs qualités pédagogiques, leur accessibilité et leur absence de formalisme - les ouvrages sur les "principes de l'économie" publiés ces dernières années par des auteurs américains réputés, tels Mankiw et Stiglitz. Couleurs, photos, extraits d'articles de journaux sur des problèmes d'actualité, raisonnements simples et décomposés à l'extrême : le produit est alléchant. Ces ouvrages connaissent des tirages très importants : Mankiw a touché plus de 2 millions de dollars avant même d'avoir écrit une seule ligne...
Translation
Everyone hails, by their pedagogical style, accessibility and absence of formalism, works on "Economic Principles, published in recent years by well-known american authors, such as Mankiw and Stigliz. Lots of color, photos, excerpts of journal articles on current day problems, simple and extremely incremental reasoning. These works have large numbers of copies sold; Mankiw has earned 2 million dollars even before writing a line
which, hey who can disagree with that? This is all very nice, but really, does any of this belong in an expository article on economics? This is mostly dedicated to the teaching of economics rather than economics itself.
But it gets a great deal of it wrong - economics, if by this you mean the study of economic behavior - goes back to Plato and Aristotle, who saw it through the tension between individual gain and the necessity for collective defense (see the evolution of the polis in Plato where the "feverish city" falls under attack because it has not ability to unify and defend itself). This viewpoint is the subtext of Wealth of Nations - note the title, the Wealth of Nations - and the importance of a social decision to engage in market behavior, which Smith outlines in Book I, and also in his other work. The name alone "Post Autism Economics" should be a clue that the writers of it are, shall we say, fringy. References mean nothing - every fringe group can site passages which show the evils of the past and where they came from. It's easy. As for "the study of exchange" and the "study of production" - that's the rough and ready distinction between "economics" and "political economy". Political economy assumes that political, collective, decision making manifests itself in measurable ways which alter economic relationships. What I don't see is anything in the passage which hasn't been dealt with in the various wiki articles. What's documentable here? A web site that declares economists and mathematicians are autistic? Replaced with what? A vague sense that people want something different? When the POV has something to document, and a visible sign that it has adherents and a self sustaining discourse, then it's worth documenting.
I'm very sympathetic to challenges to neo-classical economics - being the author of one - but by the same token, we have to have something to document here. If you feel the criticisms of the neo-classical synthesis need to be strengthened with some of the citations, by all means go ahead and do that. That's something that is documentable: POVs that question exchange as the basis. Stirling Newberry 14:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Pictures
I would like to suggest we put the pictures up for a vote - enough people seem to have enough strong feelings about this to make it worth reaching a consensus. Stirling Newberry 16:17, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Suggested have been:
The bazaar in action: Chichicasternango Market, Guatemala
I have seen no objection to the pics so far. Unless you're actually objecting here. The article clearly needs pictures, and there's nothing wrong with it having lots of pics, as long as they're all relevant and say something - David Gerard 16:26, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'm not objecting, but with 3 changes in less than 24 hours, and no a priori reason to have one over the other, it just seems better to discuss it than have people come along and decide "that's not economics, this is economics". Stirling Newberry 16:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I can whip up an XFIG picture of something like an Edgeworth box, turnpike growth path etc. I gave up on the idea of digital camera and taking a picture of the outside of Walmart (I'm too chicken). I don't think the pictures at the top should be of people. I like the picture of the Chichicastenango market.CSTAR 16:37, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The market pic's very, um, Economist, isn't it ... I'm assuming some of the harder economics articles, or related mathematics articles, will have graphs'n'stuff. If they don't, they should - David Gerard 16:42, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Look nice that you choose picture, when i shoot it i wasn't really thinking that it was going to illustrate a Economics article. if you come up with an idea about an object or illustration that represent economics i would try to come-up with a picture. Cheers, Chmouel 18:13, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The more specific economics articles do indeed have some good, crunchy graphs. Off the top of my head I remember labor economics as a good example. Isomorphic 00:45, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would add Keynes, since he basically started macroeconomics. In terms of graphs, I would use a supply and demand graph, since it's simple and ubiquitous and it's the first thing every intro student learns. All the ones at supply and demand are icky and pixellated, though. --Taak 22:13, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
We have a Keynes image, Image:Keynes.gif, but there is no copyright or attribution information on it so I'm reluctant to add it. A Keynes image that's GFDL or public domain would be ideal. (Fair-use or by-permission images are allowed on Wikipedia, but discouraged.) Image:Demand shift out.png has the right aesthetic qualities whilst being reasonably comprehensible at a glance - I'll see if there's somewhere sensible to put it - David Gerard 21:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've just added Image:Demand shift out.png in the relevant section. It does look a bit crappy and pixelated; anyone sufficiently motivated can draw a replacement for it and update the image - David Gerard 21:47, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Does the following image look any less crappy? ANy minor edits are easy to make (even color!)
Antialiasing would be nice - the curves have nasty jaggies. Perhaps you could upload a bigger version and use wikipedia's thumbnailer? Lupin 08:17, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)ft out.png]]
Here's a somewhat bigger example, perhaps better, although maybe this defeaning silence is a subtle hint. It's OK, I can take rejection. File:Supply-demand-humungous.pngsupply demandCSTAR 17:44, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Looks good, I would just propose labeling the supply curve too to be accurate. - Taxman 18:31, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
CSTAR 02:45, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
