Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
Lol yea, think tank thing is real as well. First-gen student and all that, so thought hell I have the education might as well use it, even if I’m a one man show here. This is genuinely turning into a whole lecture here lmao so uh, good luck lol.
Funny you say that, that’s actually one of the reasons I’m trying to push my local library to host a few community education semminars and the such, in a perfect world I would spend my life going from one subject to another just soaking in everything I can.
Economics as a whole, and the economists themselves, can either end up being practically stuck in the 19th or 20th century, or standing right on the bleeding edge of theory and application. While as a field in and of itself, economics equally relies on existing mathematical principles for use, so it’s a rarity to find an economist trying to create new mathematical principle like you would with a mathematician, but you will find lots of economists working to use new mathematics to integrate into economics models. A good example of this, is how often models used in the world of physics end up being used in modeling economies, or specific sectors. Even right now, the most common model used for determining market averages is a 19th century equation developed to determine the temperature of a room. Though that’s not even looking at the priciples of the subject, which are as old as know written language, if I recall you can still find basic economic principles on old cuneiform tablets. As for actual acceptance of theory, it’s pretty much always up for grabs, given it’s a field of observations on the real world, it’s impossible by it’s nature to have a universal proof, mathematically speaking at least.
As for currently widely accepted theory, the easiest to point to in the modern world are two basic assumptions. First, is that in any given economy, growth is considered a perpetuity. In the junior economics world (aka business leaders lol) they take that as the mantra “expand or die,” though it’s quite a bit more accurate to see each part of an economy, whether that’s a single business or entire sector, as limited in it’s current full potential, but the additions to the economy as a whole tend to be stay within the whole, in one form or another, even if that firm or sector disappears. Mostly this is through research, infrastructure, even how taxes paid get redistributed. So, you can technically have “infinite” future growth, while still operating within a limited resource world.
Of course the problem is most businness leaders and politicians don’t end up taking that longer run thinking, and just jump into the take everything you can and give nothing back bandwagon.
Recessions are a bit of of a hot-bed in the policy side of things, given the underlying assumption of the post-war economic models implemented in the US after WW2, and copied world-wide, is that consistent inflation on a year to year basis would be able to both foster greater economic growth by increasing total possible credit in an economy (which it does) but, that that year to year constant inflation rates should also prevent recessions and general depressions. Of course that half hasn’t come true, most senior economists over the years have pivoted into the viewpoint that controlled inflation smoothes out larger recessions and depressions, but that’s still up in the air. Since the 2008 recession was very much a depression, with many recessions ocurring pretty much decade after decade since it was enacted in 1945, it’s very much being questioned as a central policy, but for the most part it hasn’t collapsed so it’s still probably going to be enacted.
Thanks for the wall of text. :D Really appreciate it that you took the time to explain these things.
Anyway, I have some follow-up questions about the stability/volatility of theories. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the how firm and solid the models and theories are in different sciences. For example, physics has all the basics pretty well nailed down, whereas in psychology even the basic things tend to get frequent updates as more data becomes available and old ideas get challenged.
In physics, there are models that have known blind spots. Currently, we know that our model of gravity is ok for large objects such as tennis balls, planets, stars and galaxies. In an atomic scale though, our model of gravity just doesn’t line up with our understanding of quantum mechanics. So what about Economics then? Have we identified serious flaws in our economic models, like we have with gravity, or are the models about as solid as the theory of atoms or energy?
Or maybe the models are more like suggestions that kinda work occasionally, but mostly you have to take the predictions with a grain of salt. You mentioned that the idea of controlled inflation smoothing out larger recessions and depressions is still debated, so maybe that concept could be contrasted with the theory of gravity. It works for the most part, but there are known issues with it.
When atoms and electrons were discovered, a whole lot got rewritten, but now that we’ve been working with these fancy new particles for about a hundred years, this part is looking pretty well established. Finer details like string theory is anything but solid, but the big picture is nice and firm. It doesn’t look likely that any new data would lead to us throwing away our idea of atoms. Quite the contrary, now that we’ve even got pictures of individual atoms, and we have the means to manipulate them individually. Obviously, the finer details are absolutely going to change as better data becomes available, but those topics are quite exotic, like dark matter and dark energy.
The whole concept of atoms is about as solid as it gets, but are there comparable theories in economics? Something fundamental that has been tested countless times and nobody has been able to prove that the idea is wrong. Something that is accepted as a foundational cornerstone and is unlikely to get thrown out the window. Maybe something like supply and demand, but is that actually solid enough? Does that stuff get tested, debated and challenged? Have economists found some holes in these kinds of theories?