[playday]

There’s two main approaches to economics that aren’t bullshit: empiricism and praxeology. With empiricism, you conduct some sort of experiment (or identify a natural experiment) than can verify falsifiable predictions. With praxeology, you work from first principles regarding rational agents. Both mechanisms result in insights that “work” meaning institutions can use these insights to modify their policies. An easy to understand example is the application of the economics to MMORPG game currencies. But these more generally are applied by finance and government departments everywhere. There is a degree of bullshit that enters when there’s a political dynamic, such as with unemployment rate stats or gdp growth stats.

[svnt]

These systems are something but not really representative human economics.

Empiricism is vulnerable to the changing awareness of the participants: if you discover a reliable principle it will be manipulated until it is learned. Once it is learned it is no longer reliable.

Rational agents are typically poor proxies for human behavior, and the more of them you have the worse the narrative to make it even seem that they could plausible be the way humans behave.