On 8/10/2019 10:16 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 7:21:12 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 3:41:31 AM UTC+1, AMuzi wrote:
On 8/9/2019 9:21 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 1:23:24 AM UTC+1, AMuzi wrote:
On 8/9/2019 6:10 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
Andre Jute
Economics isn't difficult: it is the commonsense activities of individuals considered in aggregate.


???

If the query is about the tagline to my sig, many economists with real life experience in business are moving away from the first two great commandments of classical economics, viz that all individuals in every market are fully informed and fully rational in every decision. That is clearly not so. We don't need to go further afield than RBT for an example.

Of course we don't go as far as Krugman, who is so Post-Modern, he's totally unmoored from reality, indeed he's unattached to anything he said yesterday or the day before, though in a few days he'll probably spout the same weirdness as he did a couple of weeks ago. In fact, he's so cyclically insane, we should make him an honorary member of RBT.

Andre Jute
Sane since I was 13. I wonder how I managed that.


Krugman is indeed unhinged and he was even before Trump
Derangement Syndrome.


I must quibble that although many individual investors are
frequently wrong, and provably so, the wisdom of crowds is a
real thing and an amazingly reliable economic indicator. Nor
infallible, but amazingly prescient usually.

I agree. However, the mob is never right. The trick is to distinguish the mob from the crowd.



Andre Jute
I can't believe the foolishness of historians who equate the French and American Revolutions. The French wanted to raise a ravening mob of murderers, the American Founding Fathers created the Electoral College and other enduring institutions specifically to defend minorities against the mob.


No one understood it better than Burke:

https://www.alibris.com/Reflections-...77?matches=601

An excellent short read and starting at just 99 cents.


Thanks, Andrew. I know it, and in fact have it (free from Project Gutenberg) on iBooks to read on my treadmill, but first I want to read Thomas Carlyle History of the French Revolution again, to which Burke makes a suitable coda. At the moment I'm working my way through Stephen Meyers Darwin's Doubt, which may be the most important book of the century so far, and Carlyle is next. He's an agreeable stylist and a meticulous historian, so I won't be rushing the pleasure.


Pffff (blowing out coffee). Darwin's Doubt the most important book of the century so far? Yikes, an ID book? One hopes for so much more from the century. Try this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/193771537X/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

-- Jay Beattie.



Not a bad choice though I might suggest Jobst Brandt instead.

I'm currently reading de Jasay's collected works; astounding
insight and clarity. Underappreciated thinker IMHO.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971