Why Academics Leftists and Elitists Need to Treat Ordinary Americans With Respect
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Tapate50
Well-known member
Genuine lol
Tapate50
Well-known member
The US govt is welcome to give them all a pay raise with his tax bill if they’d like. I doubt they will.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://jamesgmartin.center/2025/11/what-is-wrong-with-economics-education/
In his 1964 presidential address to the Southern Economic Journal, Buchanan asked the deceptively simple question: “What should economists do?” His answer was not about what theories to teach but about how to teach. He argued that the modern economics curriculum had been captured by a vision of training future policymakers to manage society rather than cultivating economists as scientists who study spontaneous order and social processes.
To see the problem, we must start with the question: What exactly is “the economic problem”?
There are two very different answers. The first is what might be called the “allocation” view. In this model, all means and ends are known, and the challenge is simply to compute the best distribution of scarce resources. In such a world, economics reduces to what Buchanan called “the mathematics of social engineering.” The only obstacle is technical—calculating the optimal outcome. This perspective dominates textbooks and exams.
The second approach, by contrast, insists that uncertainty and dispersed knowledge lie at the heart of economic life. Here, no one knows all the relevant information about ends and means. Because knowledge is scattered, incomplete, and often tacit, no central planner can ever calculate the “optimal” outcome. Instead, the economic problem becomes one of discovery—allowing individuals to use what Hayek called “the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” through voluntary exchange in the market.
Unfortunately, economics education today is overwhelmingly built on the first conception. Students learn to solve equilibrium equations, calculate shifts in demand and supply, and memorize models of optimization. Rarely are they asked to reflect critically on whether these frameworks capture the world they are meant to describe.
As Austrian economist and professor at New York University Mario J. Rizzo recently noted in the Financial Times, “The students were given, mainly or only, problem-sets of a completely mathematical nature. […] There were no questions involving critical reflection on the ideas or frameworks taught.”
This approach instills in students the illusion that social problems can be solved by finding “optimal solutions.” In that worldview, markets are seen only in terms of failures—problems that supposedly require government correction—while genuine market solutions are ignored.
That is why students must first grasp the principles of economizing—opportunity cost, trade-offs, coordination—before they are asked to run equations. The market is not a machine to be “solved”; it is a process to be understood. Reforming economics education does not require a wholesale revolution in theory. What it requires is a shift in perspective: a new window through which to view the same theories, one that puts uncertainty and dispersed knowledge at the center.
…
Hayek put it best: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Yet today’s undergraduates are often taught the opposite lesson. The prevailing message is that the state can, and should, engineer better outcomes if only it has enough authority and information.
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Agreed.
In his 1964 presidential address to the Southern Economic Journal, Buchanan asked the deceptively simple question: “What should economists do?” His answer was not about what theories to teach but about how to teach. He argued that the modern economics curriculum had been captured by a vision of training future policymakers to manage society rather than cultivating economists as scientists who study spontaneous order and social processes.
To see the problem, we must start with the question: What exactly is “the economic problem”?
There are two very different answers. The first is what might be called the “allocation” view. In this model, all means and ends are known, and the challenge is simply to compute the best distribution of scarce resources. In such a world, economics reduces to what Buchanan called “the mathematics of social engineering.” The only obstacle is technical—calculating the optimal outcome. This perspective dominates textbooks and exams.
The second approach, by contrast, insists that uncertainty and dispersed knowledge lie at the heart of economic life. Here, no one knows all the relevant information about ends and means. Because knowledge is scattered, incomplete, and often tacit, no central planner can ever calculate the “optimal” outcome. Instead, the economic problem becomes one of discovery—allowing individuals to use what Hayek called “the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” through voluntary exchange in the market.
Unfortunately, economics education today is overwhelmingly built on the first conception. Students learn to solve equilibrium equations, calculate shifts in demand and supply, and memorize models of optimization. Rarely are they asked to reflect critically on whether these frameworks capture the world they are meant to describe.
As Austrian economist and professor at New York University Mario J. Rizzo recently noted in the Financial Times, “The students were given, mainly or only, problem-sets of a completely mathematical nature. […] There were no questions involving critical reflection on the ideas or frameworks taught.”
This approach instills in students the illusion that social problems can be solved by finding “optimal solutions.” In that worldview, markets are seen only in terms of failures—problems that supposedly require government correction—while genuine market solutions are ignored.
That is why students must first grasp the principles of economizing—opportunity cost, trade-offs, coordination—before they are asked to run equations. The market is not a machine to be “solved”; it is a process to be understood. Reforming economics education does not require a wholesale revolution in theory. What it requires is a shift in perspective: a new window through which to view the same theories, one that puts uncertainty and dispersed knowledge at the center.
…
Hayek put it best: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Yet today’s undergraduates are often taught the opposite lesson. The prevailing message is that the state can, and should, engineer better outcomes if only it has enough authority and information.
—————
Agreed.