Comment by bigpicture | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigpicture | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think economists agree with the concept of Big Government. Here's an entertaining back and forth between Thaler and Gene Fama about the efficient market theory [1]:

> Q: So policy makers should use bubbles as a way to step in?

> Thaler: Yes, but very gently. It’s not like I think policy makers know what’s going to happen, but if they see what looks disturbing, they can lean against the wind a little bit. That’s as far as I would go. We both agree that markets, good or bad, are the best thing we’ve got going. Nobody has devised a way of allocating resources that’s better.

> Fama: We disagree about whether policy makers are likely to get it right, though. On balance, I think they are likely to cause more harm than good.

[1] http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2016/video/are-mark...

Economists rarely have a good solution to societal problems. They have good solutions for facilitating trade but offer nothing with respect to social norms, nationalistic sentiment, etc.

We all agree that economists are good at maximizing resource allocation. Sysops are good at maximizing hardware allocation but we should let them dictate national policy :)

Politics is about taking all of the science and all of the human components of administrating a country and merge them into an ideal outcome. Economics is just one part of a bigger picture.

I disagree that economists are good at maximizing resource allocation as they largely ignore externalities.

but economists invented the term "externalities" and the analysis of such..

How good are they, especially with dealing with the unknown unknowns to quote a famous contemporary American philosopher (/s)? Even for the known unknowns, they have to make assumptions to start somewhere. Yes, they create a lot of models for all kinds of stuff, and I'm sure all those models work out well.

I must say though that I have doubts about the parent's "they largely ignore externalities", I think that is too negative a claim.

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