[gjsman-1000]

Higher education pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity, at the same time as birth rate decline post-2008 began hitting, while raising prices +93% on average since 2008. That's not a great way to survive.

[smallmancontrov]

Academia didn't choose trickle-down policy. Quite the opposite -- that was you guys, after you purged all the leftist economists in the McCarthy era. In fact, the think-tank driven economics departments of recent years are so notoriously to the right of most academic faculty that this is a point of frequent conflict.

[corimaith]

This is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve.

Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic tools like dialectics to advocate for debunked theories like World Systems Theory.

[array_key_first]

Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards.

For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets start with healthcare), the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that:

1. Healthcare is already a free market.

2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market.

1. is just not true. Healthcare, in the US and and all developed nations, is not a free market. But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000.

And, for number 2, it's very debatable. IMO no, healthcare cannot be a free market, just by virtue of what healthcare is as a service. But that's debatable, I won't get into it.

Point is, we immediately start our economic understanding based off assumptions on top of assumptions that come from free market thinking, thinking around IP, thinking about consumer knowledge, thinking about access, etc.

We make absolutely wild and unsubstantiated claims for free, and nobody checks them.

[corimaith]

>But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000.

Which economist are you referring to here? It's hard to even see what specific policy conclusions you're critiquing here, beyond a vague strawman against "free market assumptions".

[quantumgarbage]

That isn't a vague strawman, that's a great point. Economists work from assumptions, which can be flawed in two ways: they can be blatantly wrong (see the work Kahneman and Tversky did on the rational individual hypothesis) and they can be unfalsifiable (you can't always gather data about the assumption itself). There is a good essay on this from Tirole (yet a very mainstream economist) here: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/...

[corimaith]

You're pointing to a critique of an assumption, what I'm saying can you name a specific economic policy or position given by an economist that is used in real public policy and then we can measure the merits of those policies and their assumptions as opposed to the counterfactuals. I'd bet 9/10 times the chosen policy likely would have been the most logical option.

After all, it's not like the epistemologies of the other humanities stands on far more shakier grounds...

[JumpCrisscross]

> Economists work from assumptions

All models start with givens…

[JumpCrisscross]

> the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that: 1. Healthcare is already a free market. 2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market

Nobody does this.

[array_key_first]

Literally almost everyone does this.

If you start talking about competition or consumer choice, surprise! You have made an extremely bold assumption: that healthcare is currently operating as a free market.

That assumption is actually, like, 1000 assumptions. Do people prove even one of those? No. They just move on and hope nobody notices.

And, well, we don't. We're so used to these economy falacies that they're practically invisible.

[the_sleaze_]

If yall want to know why "Im a Doctor" economists are dying out - look at this back and forth. There is not one single solution or thread here. It's a series of old married couples bickering.

[the_sleaze_]

This wasn't a response to any of his arguments.

I am interested in what people have to say about them though.

1. DEI and identity politics prioritization 2. cost

[bonsai_spool]

> pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity

I'm not sure what 'half' means here. It's neither true that men make up half of applicants (which are really what we should be focusing on), nor that so-called 'conservatives' make up half of this population.

[ceejayoz]

> That's not a great way to survive.

Wait until you see how well setting it all on fire works.

[gjsman-1000]

At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story.

At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now.

[smallmancontrov]

Academia didn't make it financially impossible to have kids. Just what control do you think academia has over the market? Over the government?

"Raise house prices now or I'll send you to the principal's office!"

The gays didn't send house prices to the moon. Mexicans didn't send the jobs to China. No, it's the people with assets who pursued asset-pumping policy to great effect. You're right to be angry, but you're a fool to believe them when they point at universities as the source of the problem.

[rightbyte]

You seem to argue that academia of all places made having children being a chore. Not like, dunno, job security, housing and child care costs?

Whatever beef you got is what 'media' fed you selected smug academics to piss you off.

[bonsai_spool]

> At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story.

> At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now.

Hard to tell if this is just parody.

I will say that if feel that providing something equates to mandating it... I don't know how we're going to be able to have logical exchanges

[someothherguyy]

I feel bad for the toxic world building you are committing yourself to. You should try not monolithizing groups of people.

[yongjik]

America's greatest conservative government pressured a private business to fire a comedian for a remark on the death of someone who was basically a celebrity troll.

...and they turn around and complain about liberals' "moral purity."

[reactordev]

To them, he was a master of manipulation, exactly what they’re looking for. Someone who can spout racism and bigotry and drive listenership based on what crazy thing he’ll say next. Where does this sound familiar? It’s playbook man. That’s their business. I don’t condone any of what happened but he’s not someone we should be building statues of.