I've often thought that the economics profession could do with more cross pollination with biology. Modeling the economy as a living ecosystem with, for example, a network of parasites and symbiotes would be more illuminating than the default neoclassical mode that almost treats it like a sanitized gaseous system where you turn a dial labeled "interest rates".
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of conceptual overlap between parasitic/symbiotic organisms and economic relationships, too. E.g. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing happens all the time in scamming ecosystems:
>Often, in an effort to travel between host animals, parasites will expose their hosts to new predators, like the tapeworm Ligula intestinalis, which grows so large it changes the buoyancy of the fish it inhabits, causing the fish to swim closer to the surface and get eaten by birds.
I don't disagree with you but economists are well aware of economical parasitism. (rent seeking, negative exernalities, game theory etc etc)
The whole point of the field of economics is not as popularly believed to shill neoliberal, neoclassical free markets, it's kind of the opposite - to study all the ways in which economics models (and markets in general) fail (both in the abstract and in the real world) and how to fix that. (and the solutions have been known for decades at this point, but policymakers don't implement them)
>The whole point of the field of economics is not as popularly believed to shill neoliberal, neoclassical free markets
At least half of it is, and that's where the money and prestige generally is. There's plenty of elaborate mathematical models being created by PhDs and postdocs relying upon neoclassical economic axioms.
I don't disagree that economists are in theory aware of economic parasitism I just think that it's one of those topics where research funding can often end up in weirdly short supply.
> I just think that it's one of those topics where research funding can often end up in weirdly short supply
this simply isn't true, go actually look at what economists are doing and you will find these issues are getting studied and taught a lot, it's basic stuff
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of conceptual overlap between parasitic/symbiotic organisms and economic relationships, too. E.g. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing happens all the time in scamming ecosystems:
>Often, in an effort to travel between host animals, parasites will expose their hosts to new predators, like the tapeworm Ligula intestinalis, which grows so large it changes the buoyancy of the fish it inhabits, causing the fish to swim closer to the surface and get eaten by birds.