You criticize the social sciences ... because economics is "just about justifying existing power structures". That seems a bit ... well, wrong. Or at least the assumption that social sciences is any different from the worst you ascribe to economics here. NONE of the social sciences, not even English studies, claim to be value free (that would be mighty inconvenient for them. Of course Hamlet only makes sense within the value system of England of that time ... studying it outside of that context just won't work. Likewise criminality happens within a context. Very few bank and ATM robberies in the Soviet Union, everything social happens within a specific context, directed by values).
But ... the social sciences. They're ALL explicitly about something in between studying and justifying existing power structures ... No exceptions. Studying (and justifying) existing society is what the humanities are about. It's the definition.
By contrast economics has a branch that is entirely value free (game theory, imho the hardest part), and most of economics likes to pretend it is value free (and whilst they're not 100% right at that, they're ... let's say 75% right), and only a small part is justifying existing power structures.
Social sciences tell the government what to do like priests do : based on what "it should be" according to how we see society. Economists are more humble, and merely try to say "your choices are A, B, C. These will lead to X, Y, Z". And yes, social scientists resent that the real world should be allowed to influence their perfect world, but ... only the truly insane would follow through.
Note that at no point did I say that makes social sciences worthless.
> The 2008 crash called for a massive reassessment of the political and cultural status of economics
No it did not. You act as if people listened to economists before that. In fact, I would argue the opposite is true: economists triggered (out of self-interest, because they were working at banks) the crisis BECAUSE people went too far of the reasonable path with loans.
That's the big problem that never seems to get through. There are many causes of the crisis, of course. However the actual cause is people ... bought and built houses they could never afford (in other words they used up more resources than they could ever hope to contribute to society). That's the cause of the crisis. The banks attitude and corruption and lying ... actually let those people enjoy their ill-gotten gains for a lot longer than would otherwise have been possible (lying on loans then buying ... ill-gotten is a fair description). Not indefinitely. And of course they're the easy target.
The crisis was far preferable to the alternative : that people would just sit on those resources preventing society from working.
But yeah ... "WEI ! They took my stuff ! And look, they're corrupt !". Well, yes, they're corrupt. That's bad, but sorry to say, it's not the problem.
And yet, funnily enough yesterday morning in the newspaper one particular French, poor family came into an article. They were so poor, it was judged by social workers, that they needed to be given a house (that's one thing France does). A large house that they had "helped design and locate".
Which poor family you ask ? The new cabinet minister. The woman makes 8900 euros per month, just from her main job (she has 4, though granted, they likely pay less), and the husband (who does not have published pay), I must say, likely makes more.
Social workers' judgement ? These people needed to be given a free, 3 bedroom home in a Paris suburb.
I think values are a little bit like the GPLv3. They virally propogate into anything they are even the slightest part of. So while game theory, as maths, is value free, its place in economic theory, its promotion, its funding, its employment, are all eminently value-driven. Seeing parts of a discourse as clean, free of value judgements is to misunderstand value judgements. Information without value has only analytical meaning. Every piece of synthetic judgement implies a value system - people telling you otherwise are generally trying to sell their values through dishonest means.
> I think values are a little bit like the GPLv3. They virally propogate into anything they are even the slightest part of.
Hm... I have a git repo that includes a) some 3-clause BSD licensed code and b) a GPLv3 licensed plug-in.
The GPLv3 licensed plug-in certainly counts as being "part of" this repository.
Could you please explain how the GPLv3 code "virally propogates" across the full repository? How is a patch submitted to the 3-clause BSD licensed code tainted by the GPLv3 plug-in?
Strongly agree about values propagated into everything. Speaking of game theory, I highly recommend Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap. He talks about John Nash, the Cold War ethos and his struggle with schizophrenia, both of which highly influenced his work and view of humankind as utility-maximizing machines. Obviously lots of economic implications, kind of touches on "homo economicus", that sort of thing.
>By contrast economics has a branch that is entirely value free (game theory, imho the hardest part), and most of economics likes to pretend it is value free (and whilst they're not 100% right at that, they're ... let's say 75% right), and only a small part is justifying existing power structures.
If you want to see where the "value" part of an econ paper, study the assumptions. Perfect competition, perfect information, etc. -- these assumptions weren't commonly built in to models because they actually simplified them (there are plenty of better ways to simplify economic models).
They were built in because identifying and exposing the source of the power that feeds you isn't the way to get ahead in this profession.
>However the actual cause is people ... bought and built houses they could never afford
The actual cause was banks giving out loans to people who could never afford them and then disguising that fact, taking commission and passing on the losses to somebody else.
Arguing that it's the fault of the people who took the loans is kind of like loaning all of your worldly wealth to your irresponsible, deadbeat cousin and then blaming him because you just went broke.
> Of course Hamlet only makes sense within the value system of England of that time
Lit studies usually claim something quite different, namely that you need a sophisticated interpretative framework. The values of that time may or may not be relevant, but usually are not.
But ... the social sciences. They're ALL explicitly about something in between studying and justifying existing power structures ... No exceptions. Studying (and justifying) existing society is what the humanities are about. It's the definition.
By contrast economics has a branch that is entirely value free (game theory, imho the hardest part), and most of economics likes to pretend it is value free (and whilst they're not 100% right at that, they're ... let's say 75% right), and only a small part is justifying existing power structures.
Social sciences tell the government what to do like priests do : based on what "it should be" according to how we see society. Economists are more humble, and merely try to say "your choices are A, B, C. These will lead to X, Y, Z". And yes, social scientists resent that the real world should be allowed to influence their perfect world, but ... only the truly insane would follow through.
Note that at no point did I say that makes social sciences worthless.
> The 2008 crash called for a massive reassessment of the political and cultural status of economics
No it did not. You act as if people listened to economists before that. In fact, I would argue the opposite is true: economists triggered (out of self-interest, because they were working at banks) the crisis BECAUSE people went too far of the reasonable path with loans.
That's the big problem that never seems to get through. There are many causes of the crisis, of course. However the actual cause is people ... bought and built houses they could never afford (in other words they used up more resources than they could ever hope to contribute to society). That's the cause of the crisis. The banks attitude and corruption and lying ... actually let those people enjoy their ill-gotten gains for a lot longer than would otherwise have been possible (lying on loans then buying ... ill-gotten is a fair description). Not indefinitely. And of course they're the easy target.
The crisis was far preferable to the alternative : that people would just sit on those resources preventing society from working.
But yeah ... "WEI ! They took my stuff ! And look, they're corrupt !". Well, yes, they're corrupt. That's bad, but sorry to say, it's not the problem.
And yet, funnily enough yesterday morning in the newspaper one particular French, poor family came into an article. They were so poor, it was judged by social workers, that they needed to be given a house (that's one thing France does). A large house that they had "helped design and locate".
Which poor family you ask ? The new cabinet minister. The woman makes 8900 euros per month, just from her main job (she has 4, though granted, they likely pay less), and the husband (who does not have published pay), I must say, likely makes more.
Social workers' judgement ? These people needed to be given a free, 3 bedroom home in a Paris suburb.