{"id":36122,"date":"2018-08-02T01:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T05:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36122"},"modified":"2018-07-12T08:50:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T12:50:43","slug":"qotd-economic-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/08\/02\/qotd-economic-complexity\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Economic complexity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cProgressives\u201d mistake as \u201cscience\u201d their habit of lumping countless idiosyncratic individuals and things, each always in an ever-changing set of deeply nuanced circumstances, into catch-all categories (such as \u201cconsumers,\u201d \u201clabor,\u201d \u201cgovernment,\u201d \u201c<em>the <\/em>environment,\u201d \u201c<em>the <\/em>health-care sector,\u201d \u201c<em>the <\/em>money supply,\u201d \u201c<em>the <\/em>unemployment rate,\u201d \u201c<em>the <\/em>capital stock,\u201d and \u201cimports\u201d) and then theorizing about how these big blobs of people and things interact with each other, and how these interactions can be &#8220;improved&#8221; by an apolitical, loving, intelligent, ever-diligent scientific guiding hand. That professors and their graduate students can assemble data on each of these big blobs of people and things, can write intricate equations describing mathematically how the professors and their graduate students imagine these blobs interacting with each other, and use the gathered data and sophisticated software to &#8220;test&#8221; the equation-ladened &#8220;models&#8221; seems oh-so-objective and truly scientific.<\/p>\n<p>Yet most such exercises are b.s. Far too many of these exercises, when done by economists, are done in utter disregard of the meaningful, if impossible to observe from afar, differences that separate from each other each of the individuals and things that comprise each constructed blob. Far too many of these exercise are done by people whose impressive, deep, and vast knowledge of econometric techniques does not begin to compensate for their innocence of price theory, of history, and of formal and informal institutions.<\/p>\n<p>Correctly taught and understood, economics reveals that reality is vastly more complex than the economically untutored mind realizes. Yet this message of complexity is unwelcome by those who want to rule and command. The reason is that to understand the reality of reality\u2019s complexities is to understand that ruling and commanding \u2013 the actions of the &#8220;man of system&#8221; \u2013 can only worsen most individuals&#8217; lives. Ruling and commanding of the sort that &#8220;men \u2013 and women \u2013 of system&#8221; itch to do can only disrupt for the worse, and not improve for the better, the spontaneous forces of society.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"http:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2016\/09\/quotation-of-the-day-1842.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Quotation of the Day\u2026&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2016-09-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cProgressives\u201d mistake as \u201cscience\u201d their habit of lumping countless idiosyncratic individuals and things, each always in an ever-changing set of deeply nuanced circumstances, into catch-all categories (such as \u201cconsumers,\u201d \u201clabor,\u201d \u201cgovernment,\u201d \u201cthe environment,\u201d \u201cthe health-care sector,\u201d \u201cthe money supply,\u201d \u201cthe unemployment rate,\u201d \u201cthe capital stock,\u201d and \u201cimports\u201d) and then theorizing about how these big blobs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[712,1020,290],"class_list":["post-36122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-centralplanning","tag-progressives","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9oC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44121,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36122\/revisions\/44121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}