January 9, 2018

Economics for believers

Comment on Andrew Anderson on Daniel José Camacho on ‘The deficit doesn’t matter: thinking morally about the economy with Stephanie Kelton’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Mar 29 adapted to context

The Lord spoke out of the bush and handed over these
Twelve Economics Commandments:

1. Never cite the Bible or other religious texts in an economic argument.

2. Maintain the strict separation of science and religion under all circumstances.

3. Maintain the strict separation of science and politics under all circumstances.#1

4. Do not dabble in Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Political Science, Social Philosophy, or any other of the so-called social sciences.

5. Do not believe: prove.

6. Figure out how the actual economic system works and communicate your results in the format of a materially/formally consistent theory.

7. Absolutely refrain from storytelling, metaphors, analogies, narratives, gossip, insinuation, second-guessing, filibuster, propaganda, disinformation, and other rhetorical means.

8. Do not apply Methodological Individualism/Microfoundations.#2

9. Do not moralize. The subject matter of economics is IS not OUGHT. How the Good Society can be realized has to be determined in the political sphere. See 3.

10. Be, first of all, aware that there are knowledge and opinion, science and non-science, scientific standards/ethics, and anything-goes, true and false with nothing in-between. The ethics of science is objectivity, i.e. material and formal consistency. The objective of economics is the true theory.

11. Rest assured that those who violate scientific standards/ethics go to hell and will be tortured in all eternity with the senseless blather of Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and Pluralism.#3

12. Make no mistake: alone scientists will go to heaven. As you can easily imagine, the Lord will NOT share eternity with morons, imbeciles, agenda-pushers, blatherers, believers, and fake scientists.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 The strict separation of the scientific realm and the political realm is necessary because politics always and everywhere corrupts science. This point has been made abundantly clear by J. S. Mill: “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.” For details see Throw them out! Orthodox and heterodox economists are unfit for science and The end of political economics
#2 If it isn’t macro-axiomatized, it isn’t economics
#3 Economics is not a science, not a religion, but proto-scientific garbage

Related 'MMT and grassroots movements' and 'The irrelevance of populism for economics' and 'The Supreme Being handed over these Twelve Economics Commandments'