Socialist Progressives

"The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.

The Second Law of Economists: They’re both wrong."

― David Wildasin


"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

― Joan Robinson


Economics is not a science like physics. If you want to compare economics to the study of natural phenomena and the application of knowledge, it's more like predicting the weather than building bridges. And even that isn't quite right - unlike concrete and steel, or the atmosphere, people have agency, their priorities vary, and their motives are often inscrutable. Economics does not have "laws" like nature has "laws." Apples on the ground do not occasionally fall up and reattach themselves to trees, but people frequently confound expectations.

Economies function as they do because of human institutions. Significantly, there is no property in nature; property exists only in the mind. In a state of nature, animals (including humans) help themselves to whatever resources are available, and sometimes fight over access. Throughout history, various people have invented various ideas about property and imposed them on populations to arbitrate competing claims (and still sometimes fight over access). These ideas about property (and other economic institutions) have differed in both major and minor ways from one time and place to the next. The US economy is structured differently than it was fifty years ago, and if you were able to consult with a 15th century European, or a 17th century Native American, or a 19th century Georgian plantation owner, you would encounter ideas about property that stand in stark contrast to current US law. In this sense - and others - a fair amount of economic activity is in fact learned (or coerced) behavior. An analogy that comes to mind is language: you speak English not because it's the best or only way to communicate, but because it's traditional in your community and you have to get by, and convincing everyone to drop English in favor of Greek (or Esperanto, or whatever) is difficult, and even if you're successful in that regard it won't happen overnight. (And over time, language changes organically anyway.)

At its best, economics studies what happens under specific institutional constraints and tries to predict what will happen if laws and customs change in specific ways or remain the same. Also, economic policy is always ideological. Your notions of an ideal society might not be the same as the next person's. And economists and politicians often try to disguise their true motives and intentions - this is probably why the "experts" can be so wrong in their predictions and still retain credibility with decision makers. Is there any other "science" where this happens so frequently?

Regarding your comments about disparate schools of thought among leftists, I agree that it would be nice for terms to have specific meanings, but socialism, communism, and anarchism are broad categories (within each group there are a variety of different ideas), and these words are not well understood by many people. If I took twenty random US voters and told them I'm a leftist that favors socialism and left it at that, I'd be surprised if even one of them could guess my meaning accurately and probably more than half of them would be egregiously incorrect. I've long since come to terms with this, so if I'm trying to have a meaningful conversation with somebody I tend to eschew those labels and try to talk about my values or policy ideas with more specific language. Personally, I don't think I have all the answers and I make an effort to keep an open mind and listen to ideas from anyone no matter what they call themselves. I'd like to think I'm not alone in this respect. For the most part, I think successful political action involves assembling a coalition of people who have a somewhat similar outlook but are willing to compromise - getting a large enough group of people to be 100% in agreement on everything is effectively impossible. In a context like this, I'm happy to debate/discuss anything, but ultimately I'd rather be identifying commonalities and avoiding partitioning potential allies.