Chris: I like your use of the Churchill principle as applied to economics. Think it ought to be added to my short essay somewhere. BTW, there certainly are uses to econometric models and other rational actor systems. Depending on the day, I sometimes am a fan of econometrics. Its just that no model of the economy based on pure rationality can be taken as always true, and in cases it may be false more often than not --at least for limited periods of time or under certain types of circumstances Billy ====================================== Billy, I like your analysis. Indeed, like democracy as a flawed form of government, market-solution economics is a flawed economic system. But the alternatives are worse. Occasional disruptions are inevitable because of the flaws, so our society must apply band aids and corrective measures. Rational economics based on mathematical models will always be imperfect because the models will never be able to incorporate all of the human variables and "act of God" variables, but I still think that economists should keep on trying to improve their scientific approach. When I was in business school in the late '70s the Chase Econometric model was big… lots of fancy formulas. But even at the time I couldn't buy into the model because the variable inputs were so limited. As it turned out, I got to be a pretty good friend of the developer of the Chase Economic model, a professor at Northwestern. It was fun to talk with him about these things. Essentially, I would guess that he would more or less agree with your thinking. Chris
_______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
