I thought this week I’d discuss my take on the mysterious persistence of what I call ubiquitous bad economics in the conservative style, a misinterpretation of neoclassical welfare economics, that should have been eliminated years ago. Good times. I suppose the main issue is bad conservative economists have found a way to insulate their false rhetorical system from criticism and hence correction using a combination of gatekeeping / sorting out of potential critics, needless obfuscation, and bad pedagogy.
By gatekeeping, I mean the practice of rushing through the arcane, tricksy normative basis and status of neoclassical welfare economics, then hitting students with “clever” real world normative takes from bad economics meant to distinguish economics from common notions of morality. The students intrigued by it and attracted to it have moral views that align with bad economics in the conservative style, so egoism, greed, respect for economic power, hatred toward the poor, certain positive beliefs relating to the working of markets and so on. They are unlikely to criticize it. The students repelled by it struggle to dutifully regurgitate the dodgy results and typically depart or are ejected from the field before they have any realistic opportunity to truly understand, develop, register their objections in the language of neoclassical economics itself.
If a student disposed to critical thinking soldiers on, compartmentalizing the desired normative takes as required for the course but not buying it, he or she may progress to identifying and expressing issues in the language of economics and encounter a stratagem I call needless obfuscation. By needless obfuscation, I’m talking not only about the clever, misleading word play endemic to economics that is my normal topic of conversation, but the desire to evade and ignore sincere normative discussion and assessment and shuttle students to complex discussions unsuited to that purpose. A student may ask a perfectly simple and direct question relating to the normative argument being presented, but rather than receiving a response, he or she may be shuttled off who knows where, in the old days typically wide-ranging history of economic thought or philosophy of science. Alternatively, and more commonly now, students will be presented with a mathematical expression or formulation of the issue in which wheels will churn, theorems will be established, A will be found to equal B, complexity will abound, and the fundamental normal issue will remain unaddressed.
If a student continues to soldier on undeterred, extracts himself or herself from such roadblocks, continues to ask questions, he or she may encounter a final rhetorical line of defense: everyone has long understood the valid criticisms, but they only appear in low level economics, so … This bad pedagogy, in which instead of teaching students the fundamentals, building upon them, one teaches them what one professes to know is misleading rhetorical hogwash with the notion one will correct it in later courses for the select few if ever they get that far, is rife in economics. I may have mentioned before, but this leads to a rather humous situation in which those who haven’t studied much economics suppose saying something is “Econ 101” means it’s accepted, basic, fundamental, while those who have interpret it as suggesting it’s false, simplistic, rhetorical rot.
The end result is a weird Catch-22 sort of situation in which those who understand arcane bad economics in the conservative style aren’t bothered by it, see no real reason to address it, while all others cannot express their concerns at least in the language of mainstream neoclassical economics. It generates a situation in which already dodgy neoclassical welfare economics can exist in a close relationship to a devious, malicious misinterpretation of it I call bad economics in the conservative style, and there is very little interest in addressing it within economics.
Who’s left? University administrators? The economically powerful establishment elite likes bad economics in the conservative style promoted via academic economic departments, and the tendency of academic institutions to put profit over social responsibility creates obvious difficulties there. I suppose any change must come from the broader intellectual community including you and me, the proposed consumers of bad economics. It’s why I encourage people to delve into how the rhetoric of bad economics in the conservative style works, despite one supposes some initial revulsion. Don’t be bamboozled by fast-talking conservative economist charlatans. The relevant bits aren’t really that complicated, technical, mathematical. It’s mostly a matter of words, definitions, concepts, logic. Fortify yourself against bad economics in the conservative style, then help other.
