• snek_boi
    61·
    3 years ago

    As opposed to what? To being idealistic? Then it wouldn’t be a science, would it? It’d be a doctrine, a set of principles.

    But to properly answer, I’d say you’d first have to define what strand of economics you’re talking about.

    Neoclassical economics (the dominant strand) historically has not remained close to the evidence. Even today, at its fundamentals, it doesn’t. Just look at the controversies surrounding the evidence for marginalism as opposed to the labor theory of value. Or look at the controversies surrounding marginal cost curves in the theory of the firm, or the differences (and not the equality) of profit rates for companies in the same industry due to, for example, differences in equipment. The evidence tells a story, but neoclassical economics insists on telling the same (non-empirical) story.

    At the same time, neoclassical economics tries to solve its lack of empiricism by relying on behavioral economics, which at the very least tries to account for a cognitive and cultural context that was previously ignored.

    Neo-keynesian economics tries to account for problems in neoclassical economics by looking for a different set of evidence (demand-side policies, for example), and by framing issues differently (profits being the result of imperfect competition). They have gotten closer to solving some problems, such as having a less wonky marginal cost curve in the theory of the firm. But they have also gotten into problems, such as explaining worker agency in the broader framework of their theory.

    Finally, classical economics is the strand that keeps as close as possible to the evidence. Every single controversy previously mentioned (theories of value, theory-of-the-firm curve shapes, differences in profit rates, cultural contextualization, policy effects, and framework validity) is, in my eyes, satisfactorily dealt with in classical economics. You can be a judge of this by looking at the classical theory and the criticism it levies against neoclassical and post-keynesian theories in Anwar Shaikh’s Capitalism book.

    If your worry is that economics is forgetting its political implications (‘the purpose of science is not just to understand the world, but to change it’), each economic strand has your back. Neoclassical economics legitimizes and justifies capitalism. Post-keynesian economics legitimizes and justifies monopoly break-ups and demand-side policies. Classical economics legitimizes and justifies worker demands and socialism.

    Tools are never created in a vacuum. They can be repurposed, but it’s naive to say an AR-15 is a toy meant for long-distance tic-tac-toe.

    Hence the danger of classical economics: if people were to stick close to the evidence, they’d realize, for example, that value comes from human work and not by magical markups, or that the wage ratio (how much of the surplus goes towards profits or wages) is socially ‘negotiated’.

    But all of this is assuming you are contrasting empiricism with idealism. I could be wrong. What did you have in mind when you wrote “excessively”? For you, what would “too much” be? Would that be problematic?