I was surprised by the weakness of this article, regardless the potential absurdities of parts of EA.
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
A definition is a lot to ask for. If you truly need somebody to define "bad" for you, you're asking in the wrong place.
But we don't need to define it to know it when we see it. Here are some examples of bad behavior which is encouraged by the way we currently practice economics:
- Operating generators in violation of local regulation such that the neighborhood around your new data center now has a smattering of new respiratory illnesses is bad behavior. The economic system we've built encouraged that outcome by focusing only on the consent of whatever banker granted the loan and not on the consent of the nearby community (relevant because the loan created the money which then bought the illegal generators). We further encourage abuses of this kind by letting irrational markets determine that it's admirable, because if the stock price went up then surly it must be so, and by doing so we subsequently increase the operator's ability to take out more loans of this kind. People are dying of lung cancer and economic indicators are saying "all systems go."
- Sending weapons to terrorists with the understanding that once they destabilize the regional government, they'll give you a favorable deal re: making off with whatever local resources you're after is bad behavior. That's basically US foreign policy in South America in the 80's, and we provided teams of economists to help draft the new dictators' constitutions to ensure that we could continue to exploit those countries long after.
- Charging $80k for enough Sovaldi to treat a Hepatitis C infection is bad behavior. It's not difficult to synthesize (people have done it in their garages for <$500), and the risk of spreading further infection because you can't afford to treat yourself is high. Society bears a tremendous cost because Gilead has decided that the economics of the situation justify the price they're setting.
Economists tell people that these bad things are unfortunate consequences of a system that for the most part is a good thing. But when they're pressed to support that claim they always do so against a meaningless background, something having to do with barter, as if it's not obvious that if we didn't have a system with this broken design, we wouldn't go back to the stone ages, we'd instead have a different system with a potentially less broken design.
Despite resting on such a feeble value proposition re: the current status quo, economists don't seem at all motivated to explore alternatives either. They appear to be rather happily at work for powerful men who are hurting people, where they manufacture for those men justifications about why the pain is in fact an unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics, and no something that they should feel guilty about.
I realize that, like effective altruists, there are probably a lot of good intentions among economists. It's just hard to look at history and come to any conclusion besides that they're not very good at resisting to attempts to corrupt those intentions.
wodow · · focus · HN ↗
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
> Actually, if you think real hard about it, we're the good guys
--the bad guys
The economist likes it because it resembles what their target audience tells themselves so they can sleep at night.
fsckboy · · focus · HN ↗
and your definitions of bad behavior are therefore not post hoc, so let me hear your definitions.
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
But we don't need to define it to know it when we see it. Here are some examples of bad behavior which is encouraged by the way we currently practice economics:
- Operating generators in violation of local regulation such that the neighborhood around your new data center now has a smattering of new respiratory illnesses is bad behavior. The economic system we've built encouraged that outcome by focusing only on the consent of whatever banker granted the loan and not on the consent of the nearby community (relevant because the loan created the money which then bought the illegal generators). We further encourage abuses of this kind by letting irrational markets determine that it's admirable, because if the stock price went up then surly it must be so, and by doing so we subsequently increase the operator's ability to take out more loans of this kind. People are dying of lung cancer and economic indicators are saying "all systems go."
- Sending weapons to terrorists with the understanding that once they destabilize the regional government, they'll give you a favorable deal re: making off with whatever local resources you're after is bad behavior. That's basically US foreign policy in South America in the 80's, and we provided teams of economists to help draft the new dictators' constitutions to ensure that we could continue to exploit those countries long after.
- Charging $80k for enough Sovaldi to treat a Hepatitis C infection is bad behavior. It's not difficult to synthesize (people have done it in their garages for <$500), and the risk of spreading further infection because you can't afford to treat yourself is high. Society bears a tremendous cost because Gilead has decided that the economics of the situation justify the price they're setting.
Economists tell people that these bad things are unfortunate consequences of a system that for the most part is a good thing. But when they're pressed to support that claim they always do so against a meaningless background, something having to do with barter, as if it's not obvious that if we didn't have a system with this broken design, we wouldn't go back to the stone ages, we'd instead have a different system with a potentially less broken design.
Despite resting on such a feeble value proposition re: the current status quo, economists don't seem at all motivated to explore alternatives either. They appear to be rather happily at work for powerful men who are hurting people, where they manufacture for those men justifications about why the pain is in fact an unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics, and no something that they should feel guilty about.
I realize that, like effective altruists, there are probably a lot of good intentions among economists. It's just hard to look at history and come to any conclusion besides that they're not very good at resisting to attempts to corrupt those intentions.