I think you couldn't give up on markets even if you wanted to. You can pretend there are no markets, ala communism, but you can not eliminate markets unless you invent a limitless supply of energy.
Wouldn't it? Given limitless energy, you can literally create matter out of thin air (E=mc^2) ...
You could create new planets, replicas of anything, etc. Hell, you could even distort time to fit your needs.
Granted, it would take more energy than exists in the universe - and a little technology that we haven't tried outside the lab yet. But we already have the fundamental tech to make that happen - it would just take a bit more scaling up and fine tuning.
Yes I think you are right. Solve energy, most other problems will the solved from that. (the only thing holding back would be the side effects or fear of the side effects of accessing that energy).
That's nice. It was Merton and Scholes --- two Nobel economists --- who convinced LTCM and its customers that it was safe to place 15-30:1 leveraged bets on market volatility; that time, we only lost single-digit billions.
It's traditional to hype the Nobel prizes of Economists you agree with, and mention that it's not a "real Nobel" when it's given to someone you don't like.
you don't have to be "smart", you have to fit in. economics is a self-referential discipline. there is no real standard of truth or verity or validity of a theory and hence a lot of bickering even about fundamental questions. and so, there are "schools" of thought. whichever is the current flavor of the month (or rather decade) will carry one of its own to the "highest prize". in terms of hard to get, i'd argue the so-called clark medal is harder. anyway, economists try to act all "science-y" and serious but the fact is, those who arguably understand economics very well (say a soros) and those who win fake nobels are not the same people...
> you don't have to be "smart", you have to fit in. economics is a self-referential discipline. there is no real standard of truth or verity or validity of a theory and hence a lot of bickering even about fundamental questions.
The closer a theory fit to practice (e.g. economic modelling) the better it is.
> those who arguably understand economics very well (say a soros)
There is a difference between understanding macro economics and a person doing dubious and unethical things to get money (e.g. Soros). Soros was involved in many dubious financial transactions and was found guilty of insider trading in France. What he did in Hong Kong may not be entirely illegal but it certainly is completely unethical.
Also - their is a difference between macro-economics and things such as stock trading or currency speculation.
On the other hand - most people have a problem with a lot of economists because of what their results are (i.e. not progressive).
Meh. The Nobel prize for economics is bogus when they rewarded people from different school of economics with opposite view on how the economy work in many respect.
Hayek got rewarded for his work on ABCT theory and the recent nobel prize winner Paul Kugman basically disagree with ABCT.
I don't think Hayek's prize was due to his work on the Business Cycle. It was primarily for demonstrating how market pricing serves as a communication mechanism allowing an emergent system, a distributed "cloud" (in today's terminology), to efficiently allocate goods. (of course these concepts are interrelated)
If Newton were to meet Einstein, he'd accept Einstein's adjustments after a few hours (days?). If Hayek were to meet Krugman, they'd be ruthlessly arguing months later.
