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from Gerald Holtham (originally a comment) Radford’s points are true but the microfoundations movement in macroeconomics is guilty of greater intellectual crimes than merely attempted reductionism. It is not as if the foundations are built on extensive empirical study of the decision-making elements in an economy. We have a representative consumer who behaves according to the axioms of rational choice under conditions of certainty equivalence. Similarly there is a representative firm...

“Slow Boring” is Matthew Yglesias’s substack. I don’t subscribe. It’s about the money. I can afford it, but I don’t like the fact that Matthew Yglesias makes so much money. I am extremely envious. I admit it. I think this is a very very common problem. Many people have asked Matthew Yglesias how he makes people so angry. I guess that they too are jealous. Also the text “Slow Boring” is brilliant snark. It is a reference to Weber saying...

from Lars Syll Anyone who accepts the Neoclassical definition of ‘rational’ has, to some significant degree, lost touch with reality. So, I was expecting an ‘irrational’ reaction from this young zealot to my talk … He tried to engage me in further debate after the session, and shouted ‘But we have to make some simplifying assumptions!’ at me as I left the seminar room. My riposte, cast over my receding shoulder, was ‘Mate, you have to learn the difference between a simplifying assumption...

“tlon Uqbar orbus tertius” is an excellent story by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, he imagines a world in which all that exists are minds and ideas. He refers to the assertion that we live in such a world made by the Reverand George Berkeley. In Borges’s wonderful Obis Tertius, objects can be multiplied if someone leaves it somewhere, someone else takes it away without the knowledge of the first person, so the first person finds a copy of it (called...

from Peter Radford “Formation is the vanishing of being into nothing, and the vanishing of nothing into being” Hegel loved his dialectics.  But it isn’t just contrasts that illuminate reality.  It is connections also. Connections matter.  Single things are interesting.  Perhaps even intriguing.  But it is the way in which things connect that leads us to the better understanding of our surroundings and of ourselves. Our modern world rests largely on a web of technology that mediates our...

I was going to follow up my post on Labor’s tax and expenditure policies (effectively identical to LNP) with one on climate, pointing out the remaining difference – Labor’s 2019 proposal for a vehicle fuel efficiency target. Given that Morrison had tangled himself up with his backflip on electric vehicles after snarking about “abolishing the weekend” this seemed like one policy that would survive. But Albanese never misses a chance to disappoint, and it’s been reported he’ll dump...

Kindle $8.00US UK DE FR ES IT NL JP BR CA MX AU IN Paperback $22.00US UK DE FR ES IT JP CA Contributors: Richard Parker, Richard B. Norgaard, James K. Galbraith, Lukas Bäuerle, William E. Rees, Jayati Ghosh, Richard C. Koo, Neva Goodwin, Max Koch, Jayeon Lindellee, Johanna Alkan Olsson, Katharine N. Farrell, John Komlos, Clive L. Spash, Adrien O.T. Guisan, Andri W. Stahel, Jamie Morgan, Edward Fullbrook If you feel that there is nothing new or liberal about neoliberal economics, and...

from Dean Baker Former New York Times reporter Donald McNeil had an interesting Medium piece on how antitrust law could be impeding the development of effective treatments for COVID-19. McNeil argued that COVID-19 treatments that were developed by Pfizer and Merck, and are now in the final stages of testing, may work best when taken together. He argues that this may be the case because the drugs use two fundamentally different mechanisms for attacking the virus. By using the two in...

Σύντροφοι και συντρόφισσες, καλησπέρα Για τον Κώστα Δεν θα πω πολλά. Άλλωστε στον Κώστα δεν άρεσαν οι υπερβολές και οι έπαινοι όσο τον αφορούσαν. Διακατεχόταν από αυτή την υποδόρια και ταυτόχρονα ευγενική ειρωνεία που κρύβει πίσω της την ουσιαστική σεμνότητα ενός ανθρώπου αφιερωμένου στο σκοπό της επανάστασης. Είναι σαν να έλεγε «ας αφήσουμε τις περιττές φιοριτούρες και ας επικεντρωθούμε σε αυτό που είναι το βασικό». Σε μιά εποχή που η ήττα πλημμύρισε την Αριστερά και το...