Hardin went on to pioneer the idea of #LifeboatEthics, a greased slide to mass-extermination of "inferior" people (Hardin was also a #eugenicist) in order to save our planet from "overpopulation."

Hardin's flawed account of the commons is a sterling example of the problem with #economism, the ideology that underpins neoclassical economics:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

16/

#Economics #Economism #Neoliberalism #ChicagoSchool: "Economism's core method is reducing human interaction to "incentives," to the exclusion of morals or ethics – think of Margaret Thatcher's insistence that "there is no such thing as society." Economism reduces its subjects to homo economicus, a "rational," "utility-maximizing" automaton responding robotically to its "perfect information" about the market.

Economism also insists that power has no place in predictions about how policies will play out. This is how the Chicago School economists were able to praise monopolies as "efficient" systems for maximizing "consumer welfare" by lowering prices without "wasteful competition."

This pretense of mathematical perfection through monopoly ignores the problem that anti-monopoly laws seek to address, namely, the corrupting influence of monopolists, who wield power to control markets and legislatures alike. As Sen John Sherman famously said in arguing for the Sherman Act: "If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life.""
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

This model-first pretense of neutrality is a key component of #neoliberalism, which saw a vast ballooning of economists in government service - #FDR employed 5,000 economists, while #Reagan relied on 16,000 of them. As the jargon and methods of economics crowded out the language of politics, this ideology-that-insisted-it-wasn't got a name: #economism.

6/

We can call this #neoliberalism, but another word for it is #economism: the belief that politics are a messy, irrational business that should be sidelined in favor of a technocratic management by a certain kind of economist - the kind of economist who uses mathematical models to demonstrate the best way to do anything:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

3/

Thursday's book of the day is:
#MLM #maoist #maoism #economism #critique #jmoufawadpaul

Nothing obscures our social vision as effectively as the economistic prejudice. From here, it's a direct line to both "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horseNothing #Economism

New Ep!

(Ep. 61) [Book Talk] ECONOMISM - Bad Economics and the Rise of #Inequality, by James Kwak

Kwak makes a compelling case that an overly simplistic understanding of #economics (‘#Econ101’) is exacerbating the economic, social, and political problems of both the U.S.A. and the world at large

It’s extremely important to understand that these simple ideas are being used to mislead, lie, cheat & to control us. #economism

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/FV8GyULMIfs

SPOTIFY: https://spoti.fi/3VrGRHl

Nobody just makes anything these days, it's all about the recurring revenue

Like, if the wheel was invented today, they'd find some way to charge you for each rotation

#latestagecapitalism #economism

@jameslove Not economics, #economism.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

This belief in incentives as the final arbiter of all behavior is the fundamental tenet of #economism, and it underpins all our cruelest policies. For an economismist, anyone espousing a sense of duty or mission is merely "virtue signalling":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

13/

RT @doctorow@twitter.com

Most of us believe that we do stuff because we want to be good people, and that other people act the same. But the dominant political philosophy for the last half-century, #economism, views us as slaves to "incentives" and nothing more. 1/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1585680689965535234