Lars P. Syll

The youngest member of the Meyer-Syll family — Hedda. And yes — Ibsen is one of yours truly’s favourite dramatists …

.[embedded content] I loved this song when I first heard it twenty years ago. I still do.

The man who never wavered — Alan Bates In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your understanding, dare to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is the capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s right not to be humiliated or abused. As when Alan Bates decided to...

.[embedded content] Ein besorgniserregender Aspekt des Wokismus ist seine Besessenheit von Viktimisierung. Die Wokisten konzentrieren sich auf kollektive Viktimisierung anstelle des Individuums. Sie klassifizieren Individuen nach ihrer Zugehörigkeit zu Identitätsgruppen und weisen ihnen einen Opferstatus gemäß diesen Kriterien zu. Diese Herangehensweise reduziert Individuen auf ihre Gruppenidentität und untergräbt so ihre Autonomie und ihre Fähigkeit, sich als einzigartige...

What’s the use of economics? The simple question that was raised during a recent conference … was to what extent has — or should — the teaching of economics be modified … The simple answer is that the economics profession is unlikely to change. Why would economists be willing to give up much of their human capital, painstakingly nurtured for over two centuries? For macroeconomists in particular, the reaction has been to suggest that modifications of...

Yours truly is helping to prepare our youngest daughter with mathematics for her Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (Högskoleprovet) in a few weeks, and recommended this excellently pedagogical presentation on how to solve problems related to circular permutations: [embedded content]

Twenty fallacies of modern economics 11) To criticise/oppose the current mathematical modelling emphasis is to adopt an antiscience stance. It is not. Mathematics is not essential (or inessential) to science; science involves using tools that are appropriate to the given task. A science of economics is perfectly feasible, and the current emphasis on mathematical modelling in economics serves, given the nature of social reality, mostly to prevent that...

I veckans avsnitt av Starta Pressarna intervjuas Clara E. Mattei — författare till boken Kapitalets ordning: Hur ekonomer skapade åtstramningsdoktrinen och banade väg för fascismen  (Verbal förlag, 2023) — och diskuteras hennes tes om att den ekonomiska åtstramningspolitiken historiskt växt fram som ett sätt att hålla tillbaka arbetarklassen. Som alltid på den här podden — både intressant och tankeväckande! För många konservativa och nyliberala politiker och...

Methodology — the main problem with mainstream economics The basic problems mostly originate at the level of methodology, and in particular with the current emphasis on methods of mathematical modelling. The latter emphasis is an error given the lack of match of the methods in question to the conditions in which they are applied. So long as the critical focus remains only, or even mainly or centrally, at the level of substantive economic theory and/or...

Top 25 Heterodox Economics Books Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867) Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Joseph Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development (1911) Nikolai Kondratiev, The Major Economic Cycles (1925) Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory (1930) John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory (1936) Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944) Paul Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development...