Kuznets himself warned his theory “came perilously close to pure guesswork,” containing “5 percent empirical information and 95 per cent speculation, some of it possibly tainted with wishful thinking.”

Why do we continue teaching such harmful and false models?

@jasonhickel.bsky.social

Distribution and Development: A New Look at the Developing World
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Elegant error is often preferred to messy truth… Economists often prefer theories that produce unambiguous policy results over theories that do not, irrespective of their relative evidential bases."

Richard Lipsey
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

@pkrugman.bsky.social #EconSky

The work @sfiscience.bsky.social and @ineteconomics.bsky.social are doing on Complexity Economics can’t arrive soon enough. It’s time for a model that respects reality.

#HeterodoxEconomics #DoughnutEconomics #PostGrowth

Building *something* complex, that is.

I do think there is a strong selective bias, indeed.

As an example of sabotage being easy, many bosses do not hire underlings smarter than they are, so as to protect their position from competition.

The strategy is simple and easy to implement.

The scary thing is that I think it often doesn't take that much intelligence or strategy when the power imbalance is very large, or when people are in key positions.

Building complex takes insight.

Sabotaging something is relatively easy.

I just read this article, which argues that making congressional sessions open in the 1970s also gave lobbyists more power to influence legislation.

After this change, legislation caters to special interests and inequality rises.

congressionalresearch.org/DarkSide.html

I suspect it is a mixture of both.

Many people are stuck doing what the system incentivizes them to do, and the emergent properties can look planned even when they are not.

At the same time, people with money and influence are often in a position to reject ideas that diminish their control.

His original essay in Strike! Magazine is worth reading, although it was published prior to the YouGov poll:

strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

#BullshitJobs #MeaningfulWork #HumanCapital

In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber cites a YouGov poll that 37% of British workers believe their jobs make no meaningful contribution to the world.

If you eliminated them and the real work that supports them (custodians, electricians), one could eliminate 50% of all work without substantive loss.

Link for DOT value of a statistical life, $13.7 Million as of 2024:

www.transportation.gov/office-polic...

We are living in the gaps. We are the 'irrationals'—the unquantifiable measure that actually gives the line its length, its weight, and its reality.

#MathPhilosophy #UBI #HumanScale

Even though the rationals are everywhere, they have a measure of zero. They take up none of the actual space.

When we only support the quantifiable (the rationals), we are trying to build a civilization on a set of points that—despite their frequency—have no volume.

@scottsantens.com

#UBI

To take the metaphor deeper: The 'rational' metrics of our world are dense. No matter where you look, the market tries to find a price, a data point, or a KPI. It’s everywhere.

But in mathematics, being 'dense' isn't the same as being 'substantial.'

#MathSky #PhilSky #UBISky #EconSky

It is the unquantifiable value of life, nature, and peace that is the "irrational" part of infinity that makes us whole.

#UBI #BasicIncome #Humanity

It is a challenge, indeed. I would love to see a global "Manhattan Project" to improve economics as a science.

It is a critical technology, and it currently contains a large number of holes and outright errors.

Simon Kuznets, who invented GDP in 1934, warned people not to use it as a general measure of economic health.

...and then we went on to use it as a general measure of economic health.

This sort of thing happens repeatedly in economic history.