Your models are neither measurable nor falsifiable. Free trade can have benefits? What benefits? How many benefits? You haven't even said. What generational harm? You don't detail it at all, so if the next generation experiences any generational harm, you can claim it's the fault of free trade even though you haven't delineated the causal relationship whatsoever. That's not science, that's just complaining.
I mean I'm arguing on a message board, not writing a white paper. Of course there are alternate methods of analysis that are plenty rigorous and models that are alternative to neoclassical models. Whole books, schools of thought even. I'm paraphrasing badly while avoiding work.
But I'm also pointing out that this line of criticism is fucking bullshit. It's like textbook for mainstream economists to say WE HAVE THE MODELS and LOOK AT MY MODELS like they're fucking something worth bragging about. Supply, demand, regressions, Edgeworth Boley boxes, you name it one thing they are never short of is models and the smug proclamations you're making here, as a kind of generic appeal to "science" and "rigor" and so on.
Except they are wrong. Like really fucking wrong. Constantly, systematically wrong. So wrong that a lot of times the analysis is "not even wrong" levels of wrong.
I'm being specific here. I'm talking about what used to be called the "Washington Consensus" and it's one of the dumbest fucking ideas ever promulgated by supposedly smart people. Google it if you're not familiar it's well documented.
It never made sense and plenty of people pointed that out at the time and yet the 1990's were dominated by these policies and we set the stage for the world we're living in now with these catastrophically misguided ideas.
So maybe every single person responsible for that should shut the fuck up and stop talking about their fucking models. Or commit some kind of ritualistic honor driven suicide even.
Instead you have Larry Summers in the pages of the New York Times STILL somehow going on about how everyone should be listening to him. And Jason Furman. And plenty of others who should never again be allowed anywhere near a position of authority.
This is why people fucking hate economics and economists and they have VERY good reason to. Maybe one day the discipline will be reborn and redeem itself but until then I plan on staying mad.
Yes, I do require evidence before buying someone else's opinions. The stronger the evidence, the better. Guilty as charged.
You're illustrating my point. Making edgy rants about how everything sucks is easy, and that's why everyone does it. I can make perfectly valid complaints about economic models all day; there's really nothing to it. What's not so easy is putting forth a superior solution, and supporting that solution with evidence. I don't care how much you hate the field of economics if you can't convince me that you have something better.
