Posted: Sep 24, 2010 3:55 pm
maik wrote:It is not even the job of the economist to discover the errors.
The economist is not obliged or motivated in any way to think "outside the box"..maybe a philosopher, maybe a political scientist, maybe an economist on a philosophical mood or a charismatic analyser would think like that.. The average economist though has the theory already fixed: Free Trade. His job, at least the way it is now, is not to question the theory but to analyse the circumstances and the alternatives within it. Have you ever heard of a "communist economist" existing? Someone that would point out the dead- ends of the system and actually propose that other systems would do better? There are many that question the system but i doubt that they belong to the community of the economists and, even if they define themselves as "economists" i also doubt that the community itself would accept them. Even if there is a "communist" or an "anarchist" economist, he is certanly not employed among us..
Translation: My views on economics are correct because, uh, they are! And I don't need to care about what economists say, because they're duped and myopic anyways.
There are controversies within economics, but the merit of free trade is not among them. An economist devising a new international trade theory on solid evidence could result in a very interesting development of the field.
As for why communist economists are virtually non-existent, could possibly be for the same reason that creationist biologists are virtually non-existent? You know, some views have more merit than others. Some views contradict facts.