Economics 001

As the title indicates this blog enty doesn't even rise to the level Econ 101. I simply had to say something to coincide with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to two "Mavericks" as in the article's headline in the New York Times this morning: 2 Mavericks in Economics Awarded Nobel Prize

I've started reading some Economics stuff in a dream-like aspiration of working on a degree in economics as a way to struggle against the onslaught of old-age ... or some such grandeous goal that I can tell my great-grandchildren I am pursuing ... hopefully as an inspiration.

To tell you the truth, I can't believe what I've read so far. "These" people (Economists) are lost in an unreality of their own invention, and struggle as they might (which is mightily), they can't make their sophisticated mathematical models predict anything in reality very far into the future, other than the results of their models ... results that do NOT correlate very well, if at all, with reality. (I know, that's redundant ... but I wanted you to get the picture.)

It's like a scientist predicting how much energy it would take to boil a gallon of water at an altitude of 1000 meters with the water starting at its freezing temperature. If the scientist (or engineer) or high school student got the wrong answer, we would say that person didn't know what he or she was doing. Not so in the case of Economists. They continually get their answers wrong, and we keep going back for more answers. (Who is insane here?)

The situation parallels in my mind what I think about witchcraft. The random occurance of events is in a narrow enough range that the witch doctor nails the outcome frequently enough to retain credibility through our own wishful thinking ... or we are the rulers and we are able to make the witch doctor predict the outcome that best serves our goal ... which is to retain power.