Quote Originally Posted by silverchris9 View Post
Um, DJ, I read your first post, and it seems awfully full of analogies and metaphors itself. I understand that you consider yourself more knowledgeable about economics than crazed, and you probably are, but... I dunno, your criticism of him seems to basically boil down to I'm right and you're wrong. Actually your posts are both very Ni-heavy as well as Ti-heavy: you're trading modes of conceptualizing an occurrence as much as you're trading logical arguments.
I'm really sort of at a loss as to how to explain things to crazedrat. If I explain things in terms of A > B > C, his response is basically along the lines of "You don't know that. The universe could explode at any second, so there is no objective truth, except for the things that I arbitrarily have decided are correct." He basically randomly takes a side, then justifies it by saying that objective reality is an illusion. If he's going to outright refuse to be realistic, there's not a whole lot I can say or do, except be mean to him as punishment for being ignorant.

Also, some of the things you stated very factually, especially


seem to me to be subject to heavy debate, not just in the general population and the politicians, but among economists. I suppose you subscribe to a particular system or school of economics that makes this prediction (now that I think about it, economics is a very Gamma NT type of field. If any of my ILI friends liked math, I would tell them to go become economists), but certainly there are other schools, even if, for one reason or another, you consider them to be erroneous?
Sorry, no gray line here for you to hide behind. I subscribe to Austrian economics, also known as economics. The other so-called "schools" are utter nonsense, and I can fully and irrefutably elaborate on precisely why this is the case.

Anyway, I think crazed is right in a couple of regards, but especially this: economics is predicated on rational behavior. But in a global economy, or, whatever the label, an economy (and a media) that is more thoroughly interdependent than in the 1920s and 30s, the potential for irrational behavior is significantly multiplied. Regardless of what logical economic theories posit, the potential of a more severe global reaction was there, and we cannot say with any certainty what would or would not have happened had America used different fiscal and monetary policy, if only because people are more unpredictable than economic theory.
Please list an example of precisely what you mean by "irrational behavior" and how the potential for it has increased because of global economics. I think you are inventing terms and ascribing to them whatever meaning you choose so as to control the discussion, a common INFp tactic, I have observed.

Also, something I think (from my admittedly small knowledge of economics) that some economists tend to ignore is the idea that even given the potential or expected risks, there are some economic conditions that we simply cannot accept, even for a short time.
Like what? Be extremely specific. Remember that you are talking about economic conditions.

Even if something seems to be the more rational option, to some degree we are ethically unable to allow things to get as bad as they could, and perhaps should get, in order to "fix the system." To me, it's like the difference between 400,000 people eating one or two meals a day but surviving, and 4,000 people starving to death (okay, that's a melodramatic example, but you get the drift).
Well, I wouldn't outright abolish medicare since doing so would kill people, but you could easily phase it out in an ethical manner that minimizes the negative impact. Similarly, there are all kinds of practical, ethical ways to fix broken aspects of the economy. It's not always a matter of biting the bullet, though it is that way in the matter of this country's fiscal situation.

Or it's like those morality questions: if you have to push Bob onto the train tracks and let him get run over in order to save Suzy and Jacob, do you do it? You might say yes in theory, but then when you physically have to push Bob into the oncoming train? Isn't it a little bit like that when you're a politician in Washington, and you have to let all the companies fail and people lose jobs, etc., and not attempt to do something to help on the grounds that well, it'll make the whole economy healthier when we get out of this. To continue an earlier metaphor, isn't it possible to die of withdrawal symptoms?
Either/or fallacy. Fuck off.

I guess that was really just another list of ways we might try to conceptualize the financial crisis, but hopefully it was a moderately coherent one.
No, it wasn't. It was really annoying to read.

Really? Do you find any of their conclusions or ideas useable or do you tend to reject the whole Keynesian way of thinking? This is a subject I'm interested in myself, since I'm not really prepared to be a for real Milton Friedman economic libertarian (I don't know if that's the right term for Milton Friedman, but you get the idea), but I suppose I can see problems with usual government economic policy since the New Deal (which has been heavily Keynesian, no?)
Keynesianism is 100% coherent, but it doesn't apply to the actual way that the economy operates. I read about it so that I can more eloquently refute it.