Lessons posted:

i liked it as well and i think it dovetails nicely with third worldism (though for what it's worth kliman has more or less explicitly rejected third worldism). there's a problem i have though, namely that he presents his theory as an explanation for the crisis without actually explain how it caused the crisis, he just sort of says "well we have good evidence that this is happening and the keynesian explanations don't work empirically" so basically it comes down to process of elimination or something. that's not really sufficient for me. maybe he goes into that more in his book and perhaps i'm making something of an error and you can't really provide direct causal explanations like that in macroeconomic theory, but it stood out as a weak point in his lectures.

actually thats how economics works ahahah hahahaaaaahaaaaaahaha but it shouldnt

Lessons posted:

Doug posted:

friedman's entire body of work was pointing out empirical "flaws" in keynesian macroeconomics which dont even disprove what he thinks is disproving, then defending it philosophically with "positivism", aka economic theories only apply to whatever i want them to so all they need to be is a black box analysis and if they directly contradict the real world then thats fine

Those sound like two diametric opposed objectives, if you're going to disprove something empirically you can't then turn around and say the empirical doesn't matter.

WHERE'S YOUR NOBEL

edit: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/#3.2

Edited by Doug (Nov. 16, 2013 19:34:10)