为什么经济学是伪科学及其他

Since the days of his infancy, man has been dreamt of conquering the world. The meaning of the world evolved from the tiny habitats of our forefathers to the global village today. To this day, at least half of us believe we have to a large extent put the world under our control and it seems quite obvious we have done so, or at least are on the way to realize that ultimate Zweck. However, the other half of us are not so optimistic. Over the past thousands of years, people from all walks of life have asked the following questions. Is that really the case? Has all that he has achieved mere illusions? Is the dream only one that can be never realized, or because he is on the wrong way that is heading away from it? The debate is especially merkwurdig today, as every decision we take today will have a ever significant and irrevocable impact on our future.

To have a better idea of the situation we are facing, it is a necessity to see what der erhober der welt ist. To have something under control is eradicate or at least reduce its body freedom to such a degree that whatever changes may occur to it is well within the expectation of the owner. Your pet cat is under your control because you always keep it in your house or even tie a rope to its neck, therefore, it can only be found in your house or is always only a rope-length distance from you and is in this sense within your control. Moreover, a cat always serves as a cat, you are quite convinced that it can do you no more harm than breaking your antique vase or leaving some scratches on your hand.

On the other hand, a wild lowe living in Africa (another member of the cat family) is not under your control. You can neither keep it within your reach, nor can you make sure if your pet lowe will turn to kill you.

So far, what is called the process of conquering the world is merely the process of reducing the body freedom of it. The scientific advancement that mankind made so far is not about what the world really is, but how to make the world more certain and controllable. A physical law always runs like this, ceteris paribus, if condition A is satisfied, then B will happen. Thus, science is good at telling us how to build a plane or a nuclear bomb, but poor at predicting how a piece of paper would be hurled by the wind in the St Marco square.

It is in this way that body degrees of freedom are reduced. Natural laws tell us what will happen if certain condition is met, and the development of our productivity enables us to meet more conditions, and so on and on.

The fact that natural science is regarded as a more solid a science than social science can be better explained by the arguments above. In natural science, the preconditions are more likely to be satisfied. While in social sciences like economics, the hypothesis and preconditions are much harder to be met, in other word, the degree of freedom is highly unlikely to be reduced significantly.

One of the best examples of it can be found in totalitarian regimes where the authority controls everything from media to education, from production to consumption, in order to make every citizen think and behave in the same fashion. This can be explained as an effort to reduce the body freedom of the social structure and make easier for the authority to control the country. But it turns out its not an easy job, the authority needs to make immense investment to have a hand on almost all aspects of daily life and maintaining a large army and police force. To make things worse, the goal of reducing degree of freedom can only be achieved at the cost of discouraging innovation. The high cost of maintaining the authority and lack of innovation tell us why economic performance of totalitarian regimes are usually poor.

When we read novels or watch TV dramas, it often occurred to us why the stories that seem so beautiful can hardly be found in the real world. It’s because in the world of literature, the authors deliberately reduce the degrees of freedom. The chain of events would break if any one of the characters just thinks a little bit otherwise. But in the literature world, everyone is typicalized and would only think and act in a predictable way.

Economics is probably the most controversial subject to this day. On one hand, economists insist that the result of their work has a significant impact on the world’s economy, on the other, many more doubt whether economics will have any significance beyond the realm of elfenbeinturm. It is because economic theories are based on a series of hypothesis and preconditions which are unlikely to realize in the real world that many doubt the practicability of these theories.

It should be point out I never doubt the logical validity of economic theories. Economists today are also good mathematicians and it is no doubt the result they arrived through deduction from the axioms and postulates is sound. The problem lies in how to realize the preconditions. In my opinion, these theories can only be used in a world where body freedom is much small than that of ours where everyone thinks and acts as the theories herausfordernt. As a result, the economists, who seek to have their theories carried out and usually have a big say in the government, focus on establishing a structure that will reduce the body freedom of the world.

One way to achieve this is to establish a framework of laws and regulations in which economic activities are carried out. The hypothesis behind this is that all men in the economic sense are rational and would only do something whose benefit outweighs its cost. And thus, the legal framework adds incentives to some activities and diverts resources away from activities whose cost exceeds benefit after laws and regulations are applied. As for why some activities are encouraged while others discouraged will be discussed later. As a result, the degrees of freedom of the space of possible economic activities are reduced.

The other way is to reduce economic players in the realm of economy. Here economic players refer to those that would play a significant part in economy. As we know, the more components a system is composed of, the more complex it is. Thus, by concentrating the resources an entity is endowed, the number of economic players in it is reduced and so does body freedom. As is often seen in centralized economies, a country’s resources are controlled by the authority and with them large state owned entities are established, the number of qualified players is controlled by the authority.

The purpose of these ways is to reshape our world so that it looks more like the perfect world described by our dear economists.

It seems a paradox that on one hand an economy with numerous small but homogeneous economic entities should have the largest body degree of freedom while on the other the situation is very similar to a perfect competitive market which is always hold as the simplest economic model whose result is most certain. Does large body degree of freedom always lead to unpredictability? The answer is yes and the paradox is in fact not a paradox. Since the numerous entities are homogeneous, their degree of freedom should be viewed as one and thus the perfect competitive market situation is another planet in the dreams of economists where the degrees of freedom are much lower.

Let’s go back to the debate between those who believe economic theories do promote economy and who do not. First, it should be pointed out what kind of impact, it there are any, will economic theories have on the economy. No matter how complex these theories are, they always exert their influence in the following ways:

1. Facilitating the flowing of resources, including reducing the barriers like lowering tariffs and establish a well functioning capital market.

2. Making adjustments to the economic structure, including diverting resources from one sector to another and supporting emerging industry.

If economics does work, it must work through the above two ways. Let’s see how.

Many say that economics plays an important role in the world today and college students majoring economics and the like are taught economic theories. But still I cannot see, if there is some example that can be given to show that the application of some economic theories lead to the economic success of some emerging or emerged economy, or result in the alleviation of poverty in some African countries. All I could see is a new theory is worked out after a country has undergone a considerable economic boom, or a country plunged in economic depression or crisis. It seems theories are used to explain instead of to guide economic activities. The theories explaining the economy boom of Japan after WWII can hardly be used even as references for Iraq, which has just undergone a war and is also rule by American military. You may argue that the situation between the two countries is so different and it should be the basic principles behind these theories instead of its details that should be paid attention to. In your opinion, the economic success of EU is a good example of the importance of economics. The establishment of the Breton Woods system and the Marshall Plan played a crucial role in reviving Europe. But I still wonder why the European economy accelerated so much after EU vertrag ist signed when the system and plan have already in place for quite a while.

The answer, I think, might be found in Mancur Olson’s masterpiece. It is the rule of economy of scale that works here. When Europe is integrated, the resources of its member countries are pooled together, and economic entities of larger scale are able to be formed. Better cooperation and coordination amongst mitglied countries lead to better allocation of resources and the birth of big companies.

Why economics work, or gives us the illusion that it works? The answer might lie in this. As is mentioned earlier, during the application of economic theories in the real world, some efforts are made to adapt the real world to the perfect world where the axioms and postulates of these theories are met. That is, they reduce the degree of freedom of the world. But as is mentioned, this zweck ist achieved through establishing a legal framework and concentration of resources carried out by the government. Therefore, the process of reducing body freedom is also the process of pooling resources. So, again, it is the rule of economy of scale that works.

So far, so good, if the economists have only gone thus far. However, many economists work for big companies or are at least on behalf of them, (the case of which I call the economist being in the industry). They are always lobbying the government to divert more resources to the industry they are in. Once the system that favors their industry, they would try their best to make the government to maintain it. So, what is wrong here?

The answer is that it violates the rule of economy of scale. The rule is not to concentrate resources in one place and more than double the output with doubled input. It should be held in a system where resources are free to flow, and would flow to the place where will work best. The fact that resources in the world is not evenly distributed is not because we deliberated planned it, but it is because resources will go to the place where it is most needed if remain unhindered. The process can be pictured as thus, there is some water on a large sheet of paper which is very soft and water proof. The paper is hanging by its four sides in the air. The water on it will only go to the lowest point on the paper and once more water gathers at a place, the weight of the paper will make press the paper even lower and as a result more water will concentrate on that. So, it’s the result of free flowing of resources that economy of scale is realized in some places. While in the case with economists, they actually hinder the free flow of resources. Because they do not want their industry to lose resources to other ones, so even in cases where resources should have been diverted to other places had there been no hindrance, they still refused to do so. Therefore, in the words of economists, the maximization of social welfare is not realized.

To make things worse, the experiments of economists might turn out a waste of time and other resources, if not a disaster, for mankind. As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, besides the debate over the practicability of economic theories, there is the more important debate over whether mankind’s ultimate zweck of conquering the world could be realized. It seems, as far as western philosophy is concerned, we can conquer the world by reducing its body freedom. The establishment of social structures reduces the degrees of freedom of our society, so is the application of natural laws. Though we have gone far on this road, I still wonder this is the right road to the ultimate goal.

A good example to show this is the human language. Someone argues that human language is mirror of the real world by relating an object in the real world with a word. As Ferdinand de Saussure put it, the signified and the signifier. But in fact, its not a mirror of the real world, but one of the world perceived by us. Each word of our language has relative fixed meaning no matter what circumstances it’s in and different combination of words convey different ideas. Our perception goes like this, we divide the real world in our perception into small parts, each of which are considered fixed, and relate it to a word. Then they are recombined and synthesized in our mind to form meanings. When the meaning is conveyed to us, we make deductions from it and new meanings are formed. Then new meanings are cut into pieces and re-related to words and the real world to convey to others. Something wrong with this process would lead to dyslexia. It is through the process of cutting the world into small pieces that are considered certain that reducing degree of freedom is achieved. This looks a little bit like the example put forward by Henri Bergson: a replica of a painting is made by numerous pieces of colorful mosaics. But no matter how similar the two looks like, they are still on different levels. The former is a mere pile of fragments. A subtle change to the original painting will lead the former to be destroyed and recreated.

So is the case with our search for the ultimate goal. No matter how well we keep the world in our control in the sense of reducing its degree of freedom, it is still a different world. Even if we live quite comfortably with the world today, a subtle change to the current situation could still plunge us into leiden.

A suivre

建议楼主还是好好看下科学的定义吧。

经济学是科学。

科学无定义，定义不能适用于“科学”这样的词汇

经济学只是一门艺术:为一些人多分蛋糕和另一些人少分蛋糕找到借口.

逻各斯中心主义

　　是会打仗的人是军事家，还是只会纸上谈兵的人是军事家。

　　２战前，德国只用了４年多时间，就把经济发展起来了。２战后，瑞典仅仅只用了，短短几年的时间，就从１个贫穷落后的农业国家，发展成１个发达的工业国家。

　　这２个人学的《经济学》难道也是伪科学。

[此贴子已经被作者于2007-7-23 18:10:17编辑过]

如果某国像二战前的德国和后的瑞典那样旧秩序被摧毁的一干二净，外部条件有适合的话，发展是自然的。发展来自客观条件，而不是经济学。经济学是hindsicht,只有时候解释，没有指导作用。

经济学和心理学是两大伪科学。用卡尔.popper的话来说是不能falsify。实际上，用我前面的话来说就是，经济学的前提无法实现，心理学的前提永远都能实现（可以编一些无法reduce的心理学特有的术语），所以都是伪科学。

凡科学理论有三部分组成，即理论特有的术语，可得到的或可以观察的现实世界的结果，以及两者之间的确定性关系。所以说，科学理论或模型绝非通常认为的是真实世界的正确反映，而是描述了一个与真实世界平行的世界，通过与真实世界共同的某些结果与其相联。其形式都是如果a，则b。理论对我们的意义是b，我们的目的是为了得到b.而理论正好提供了得到b的一条path,即满足a。而a在自然情况下是无法满足的，所以理论或模型是真实世界的正确反映。这样，所谓falsify也没有了证伪的意思，因为本没有真伪可分。所以科学理论的意义，在于可实现性，而不是falsifiability.

经济学没有可实现性。