571–580 of 582 posts
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Compared to "The Wealth of Nations", for example, which had much better economic analysis, despite being published a greater part of a century earlier. Ideas of Smith, Ricardo, or Bastiat predate Marx, and are very favorably cited today by modern economists. Marx's, not really.
Economists do not cite Malthus either.
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Compared to "The Wealth of Nations", for example, which had much better economic analysis, despite being published a greater part of a century earlier. Ideas of Smith, Ricardo, or Bastiat predate Marx, and are very favorably cited today by modern economists. Marx's, not really.
It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is. In fact, as products of the same classical era, they shared some of the same problematic views, including adhering to the labor theory of value, that would discredit Marx's economics. Of co…
No, I meant exactly what I said. Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, for example, remains being part of foundation of modern understanding of international trade. Every economics textbook teaches it. Same with Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. If their writings don’t get explicit citations in published papers, it’s for the same reason Pythagoras or Euclid don’t get citations in modern mathematics either: their results are so foundational that everyone knows them.
> If anything, extending the our gaze beyond the realm of the contemporary field of economics would reveal that Marx far outpaces these other names in citation value.
Of course, people keep citing Marx. Not economists though, or if they do, not favorably.
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Malthusian model is the basics of modern understanding of historical populations. See, for example, Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”. The population very much reproduces itself geometrically (or at least used to for most of history), and the growth in food supply was much slower. In effect, the historical populations quickly hit the equilibria, and oscillated around Malthusian limit. Compare, for example, rapid pop…
You can't possibly believe the model that population grows until food is depleted at the margin, it's obviously wrong.
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See also: employees on a sponsored work visa
You can’t get sponsored work visa for applebees unless you’re doing it illegally. You either get it for high skill industries or farm labor, no other employment.
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It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is. In fact, as products of the same classical era, they shared some of the same problematic views, including adhering to the labor theory of value, that would discredit Marx's economics. Of co…
> It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is. No, I meant exactly what I said. Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, for example, remains being part of foundation of modern understanding of international trade. Every economics t…
Ah, well then I will continue to be puzzled by your response - i.e. why you think any of the classical "economists" you've named are so much better qualified than Marx to critique Malthus (going back to the original premise of this discussion).
Adam Smith is, of course, famous for being the first "economist," but his legacy isn't the result of him being particularly accurate (nor are his actual economic views very clear or citation-worthy). What did Bastiat even produce that could be cited by economists today? Of course the broken window fallacy is popular in Econ. 101 textbooks, as well as with the Austrians and in the free-market blogosphere, but it's not citable research. Ricardo was a seminal figure in the development of modern economic thought, but he was also a product of his era who was wildly wrong about lots of things. Moreover, Marx was familiar with his work, both adopting and critiquing parts of it throughout his career, so it seems a bit peculiar to lionize Ricardo while portraying Marx as incapable of offering a critique of Malthus.
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> It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is. No, I meant exactly what I said. Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, for example, remains being part of foundation of modern understanding of international trade. Every economics t…
> No, I meant exactly what I said. Ah, well then I will continue to be puzzled by your response - i.e. why you think any of the classical "economists" you've named are so much better qualified than Marx to critique Malthus (going back to the original premise of this discussion). Adam Smith is, of course, famous for being the first "economist," but his legacy isn't the result of him being particularly accurate (nor ar…
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> No, I meant exactly what I said. Ah, well then I will continue to be puzzled by your response - i.e. why you think any of the classical "economists" you've named are so much better qualified than Marx to critique Malthus (going back to the original premise of this discussion). Adam Smith is, of course, famous for being the first "economist," but his legacy isn't the result of him being particularly accurate (nor ar…
Let me clarify it then. The poster I responded to claimed that Malthus is a butt joke of economics, which is patently false, and to support that, he cited Marx, whose economic theory is in fact a butt joke of economics. Is that clear now?
Both Marx and Malthus have present-day adherents, though current positions have evolved well beyond those of their progenitors, but they've both also been widely panned. Obviously, the fact that neither mass global starvation nor global communism have overwhelmed humanity makes it easy to critique the pair, at least on a superficial level. You might suggest taking a more nuanced examination of their legacies, but I think that would reveal this entire discussion's lack of intelligibility. Perhaps you'd like to take a nuanced view of Malthus, but view Marx superficially?
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My pet theory is cities are malthusian. Contrary to popular belief, Malthus didn't predict runaway population growth. What he actually predicted (and was right for most of human history), is that any gains in productivity would be eaten up by population growth until the average wealth per person diluted down to it's previous level. So back to cities. Here's my pet theory. You build more apartments, or faster trains o…
> This dynamic works because unlike pre industrial malthusian times, cities do not rely on birthrates for population growth. The same was true in pre-industrial times too. The cities have always been population sinks, and failed to reproduce naturally. They have always been supplied by the constant stream of people from countryside.
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Malthusian model is the basics of modern understanding of historical populations. See, for example, Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”. The population very much reproduces itself geometrically (or at least used to for most of history), and the growth in food supply was much slower. In effect, the historical populations quickly hit the equilibria, and oscillated around Malthusian limit. Compare, for example, rapid pop…
You can't possibly believe the model that population grows until food is depleted at the margin, it's obviously wrong.
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I saw this on Reddit yesterday, the comments were much worse. In this thread there is a mention of Ethics, and even a post that shows the thinking of how someone could write the email without being Satan's brother.
Having someone in here arguing for the ethics of this sort of thing is not better. Just because it looks like we all follow an official style guide in here doesn't make what is said here automatically better . It has to do that on its own merits, and as long as "arguing persuasively for evil, as a thought exercise" is considered a good thing here that can't happen imo. Civility and debate themselves are not virtues!…
>as long as "arguing persuasively for evil, as a thought exercise" is considered a good thing
There in lies the problem, it isn't evil. There were some pro worker points about making life easier for your employees, and there were some anti-worker points about trying to pay your employees less. On the whole I am not sure what the big deal is, companies have never paid more than they have to, suggesting that the current environment might allow for a reduction in wages is not "evil".