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Comment by yes_really | Hacker News Reader

> Which economy? Certainly not the ones that are getting destroyed by "biggest ever recorded" tropical cyclones.

The literature is mixed on whether climate change is really the cause on these recent natural disasters and, if it is, on how it impacts those disasters (e.g. reducing the frequency of the disasters, changing their location, etc).

> Maybe he meant Sweden finally being able to grow and export bananas?

Your example of Sweden is a rich country, but most of the increases in crop production would take place on developing countries - and that is a big deal for them.

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Massive crop failures across poorer equatorial regions have become increasingly regular.

Longer, harder, droughts, and then extreme water events that can’t retain much of the water causes other problems beyond just floods.

Economists have historically proven to be extremely inaccurate at predicting long term patterns. They also have a strong bias in favour of business, so always find “supporting evidence” for almost any choice creating immediate gains for business.

An easy measure is: has any major economic “study” ever supported raising taxes for businesses or the rich? Have they supported investing in employee welfare? Universal healthcare? Etc

In countries that have done this, and thus actually measured the outcomes, they have found things have improved for the majority of people.

In countries that have followed the “reduce taxes and services” to improve society we have for decades seen the exact opposite, and yet economists still claim that life will improve for people. Again, this is despite decades of direct contrary evidence.

Economics is a fiction, the only actual supported piece of economic theory is supply vs demand. That’s it.

>>> Economics is a fiction

Yet we allow economics PhDs in central banks to set the price of our money.

Those economists had a pretty good track record when it comes to inflation.

I think you are mostly focused around neo-classical economics which took over in the 70s and basically postulates perfect free markets and perfectly rational actors which we don't have.

When it comes to taxes it is actually quite ironic. People do behave like "rational" actors because the problem space is so small, they vote for lower taxes.

I think we should take a step back and adopt an economic system that treats money as a medium of exchange, not a tool to indebt people. Land as a medium of housing, not as a tool of segregation. Patents and copyright as a medium of innovation, not as a tool for crippling competition.

From what I can tell, none of that matters, people want to be the "king" and everyone else to be the "serfs", despite the fact that it is quite obvious that giving everyone the freedom to decide for themselves and utilizing the brains of billions of people is better than the brain of one.

It's the classic prisoners dilemma.

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