Perry: Government you can TRUST.

[Cain]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

[Kai]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

Anything that acknowledges that humans are social animals whose interactions are based largely in dominance hierarchy struggles and due to memory problems, poor future sense and cognitive bias will often take perceived short term gain over rational best interest is much better than the farce which is being prescribed right now.

[PopeTom]

Aren't a lot of economic argument made from the perspective of 'a perfect system'.  The people making the arguments apparently not realizing that a perfect system won't exist as soon as real live humans get involved?

[Adios]

Unfortunately, Political Science and Economics have no such basic, concrete theories which are foundational for understanding of the subject as a whole.

This explains why science continues to progress, and economics and politics do not.

If Economics and political science used sociobiology as foundation, I think they would advance quite nicely.

IF my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

Anything that acknowledges that humans are social animals whose interactions are based largely in dominance hierarchy struggles and due to memory problems, poor future sense and cognitive bias will often take perceived short term gain over rational best interest is much better than the farce which is being prescribed right now.

Though my opinion on this doesn't carry much weight, I agree.

Monetary incentives only accurately model a tiny slice of human behavior, and only in very limited contexts, according to RSAnimate.

[Kai]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

Anything that acknowledges that humans are social animals whose interactions are based largely in dominance hierarchy struggles and due to memory problems, poor future sense and cognitive bias will often take perceived short term gain over rational best interest is much better than the farce which is being prescribed right now.

Though my opinion on this doesn't carry much weight, I agree.

Monetary incentives only accurately model a tiny slice of human behavior, and only in very limited contexts, according to RSAnimate.

Yes. They would be modeled much better by the four following things:

1) Survival. Money can fit into this, but only so far; if survival needs are provided for there is no more incentive to increase the pool towards this end. This is why people who are well off are survival stupid.

2) Reproductive fitness: In bisexual mating systems, the sex with the least reproductive cost is more promiscuous, and that with the less is more choosy. Males in humans are more promiscuous, and females more choosy, due to the difference in gamete size, physiological nurturing and parental care of the young. This trumps everything, as humans wouldn't be around if it didn't.

3) Social status: Males who have high social status have less worry about survival and more access to females. Females with high social status are much the same, but instead of more access they have more ability to choose. Reproductive fitness still trumps social status, as can seen by all the male politicians who get caught fucking their secretaries. Social incentive would dictate not doing this, but reproductive incentive is far stronger. Let me be clear, most of them are not thinking "I want to impregnate my secretary", but it's a linked response. Sex feels good, because it increases the likelyhood of reproduction occurring. Now, you may be asking, "then why aren't there orgies in the streets?" Because, dear reader, female choice establishes an arms race between male and female sexes, males to defeat female choice, and females to enhance it. Social status can trump survival, especially if it leads to an increase in fitness.

4) Entertainment. For much the same reason there is sexual incentive. Being entertained feels good, and feeling good is an incentive for doing something, whether social or sexual or survival. But pleasure often becomes linked to things which are not associated with any of the above, so entertainment can be a driver for human behavior, though not as strong as the above things (despite prevailing stupidity; think "hey guys, watch this!").


And lest anyone call me on this, /YES/ I DID pull this out of my ass. So there. It still works better than thinking people work on monetary incentives, with millions of years without money as a selection pressure to change behavior. Plenty of selection pressures on survival, reproductive fitness and social status, though. Entertainment is just incedentally linked through pleasure and survival.

[Epimetheus]

Nice breakdown, Kai.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Yes, it is.
I was thinking about the reproductive cost thing the other day. "Double standard" is kind of a misnomer if it's hardwired, isn't it?

[Triple Zero]

Now, you may be asking, "then why aren't there orgies in the streets?"

I wasn't at first but now I can't stop wondering about it!!!

Because, dear reader, female choice establishes an arms race between male and female sexes, males to defeat female choice, and females to enhance it. Social status can trump survival, especially if it leads to an increase in fitness.

So how do we fix this????

[Phox]

Now, you may be asking, "then why aren't there orgies in the streets?"

I wasn't at first but now I can't stop wondering about it!!!

Because, dear reader, female choice establishes an arms race between male and female sexes, males to defeat female choice, and females to enhance it. Social status can trump survival, especially if it leads to an increase in fitness.

So how do we fix this????

I also vote yes on orgies in the street. Good clean family fun.

[Cain]

Aren't a lot of economic argument made from the perspective of 'a perfect system'.  The people making the arguments apparently not realizing that a perfect system won't exist as soon as real live humans get involved?

Well, kinda.

They're looking for an abstract, parsimonious, rule governed system where rational economic actors engage in cost/benefit analysis in economic terms.

The problem is parsimony is only useful when it actually explains the phenomena and just becomes unnecessary simplification after that, abstract theories tend to detract from the actual real world impacts of policy, rule-governed systems assume we've discovered the rules in the first place and, well, as for the rational economic actor....little things like religions, family, concepts of honour, cultural traditions and so on tend to decrease the possibility of rational decision-making.  The psychological factor is one that is massively overlooked in economics, and has only recently been examined (by behavioural economists, who do experiments to see what people actually do in a given situation, rather than assume they've worked backwards to the basics through superior reasoning and education).

[Cain]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

Anything that acknowledges that humans are social animals whose interactions are based largely in dominance hierarchy struggles and due to memory problems, poor future sense and cognitive bias will often take perceived short term gain over rational best interest is much better than the farce which is being prescribed right now.

Well, exactly.

The problem is, "science" is kinda a dirty word in many of the social sciences right now, among intelligent people, precisely because of the kind of "theorizing" I mentioned above when I replied to PopeTom.  And that's not entirely without merit, when you consider how horribly wrong the likes of the Chicago School of Economics and the Harvard School of Government have been on every major topic in economics and politics in the last 50 years.  They're applying a sort of quasi-scientific approach...it's just so horribly flawed and wrong that anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by their little academic cults is immediately turned off.

The thing is, at least with politics, the historical factor has to be present.  As does the humanist factor.  Coupled with actual experiments of how people actually behave in situations which can be scaled up to the level of concern which the researcher is involved with.  Economics requires the psychological and cultural factors which are almost entirely ignored (or, more cruelly, acknowledged but then advocating their destruction in order to bring about the perfect economic future).

The instrumental-rationalist/quasi-scientific approach in the social sciences has been an utter disaster, not just for our understanding of the world, but on a real, practical level.  It cannot go on like this forever.

[Triple Zero]

"but acting that way would be irrational and stupid!!"

yeah but it's happening right in front of our eyes, and ignoring observations because they don't fit a theory isn't very scientific.

additionally, I get the strong feeling that this theoretical perfect world that is not "irrational and stupid", even if it can be partially, locally and temporarily achieved, is nearly always a very unstable equilibrium.

[Cain]

A perfect example of what I would be talking about would be this:

During the Cold War, a lot of funding went to social scientists to figure out how to counter, and ultimately destroy the Soviet Union - preferably with nukes not being involved.  One of these men, Kenneth Waltz, sat down and thought for a long, hard time about this.  He kept on thinking, until he felt he had seized upon an answer.  He wrote and published a book, called Theory of International Politics, to international academic acclaim.

The problem was, his book was so utterly useless it helped no-one.  As a national security advisor who read the book once complained, while it made lots of bold claims like that bi-polar systems were more stable, that told him absolutely fuck all about the outcome of the only conflict that concerned him - the one between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Waltz, when pressed on these criticisms, stated it didn't matter whether or not he made certain policy recommendations, as that was not the role of a theorist.  Here's what another critic says:

The primary villain in this process, according to most of the increasingly vocal critics of the discipline, is Kenneth Waltz, whose self-proclaimed scientific overall of political realism is said to reduce international politics "to a self-enclosed, self-affirming joining of statist, utilitarian, positivist, and structuralist commitments" (Ashley 1986, 258; Waltz 1979). Ironically, however, Waltz, more than any of his followers and critics, consistently acknowledges the explicitly analytical, abstracted nature of his neorealist theory of international
politics (Waltz 1990, 31; see chapter four for further discussion).

There are many legitimate criticisms that can be leveled against Waltz, but subsequent debate has largely missed the point of his neorealist theory, focusing on whether and how to flesh out its allegedly sparse interpretation of political structure while failing to recognize that its parsimony is precisely what Waltz intends, and is the essence of his contribution. Clearly it is not realistic to reduce the exotically complexreality of international politics to a handful of variables, and to understand state behavior purely in terms of the competitive dynamics created by the anarchical structure of the international system. But being thoroughly unrealistic is exactly what Waltz intends, and exactly what deductive theory requires (Waltz 1990).

Post-1979, however, the alpha and omega of mainstream IR theory has involved a quest to make neorealism describe and explain everything, in blithe disregard of its intended function and the intrinsic complexity of international politics. Remarkably, the stunning arrogance of Waltz's theoretical claims is all but eclipsed by the rush to adopt and adapt them. Conspicuously absent in these debates is any serious attempt to question Waltz's claim to provide not  a theory of international politics, but the theory of international politics. In one stroke neorealism slams the disciplinary door on all other conceptions of theory, all other conceptions of realism included. Again, the sheer audacity of Waltz's position is mitigated by his frank acknowledgment of its deliberate abstraction from  "the rich variety and wondrous complexity of international life" (Waltz 1990, 32). But, as the debates occasioned by Waltz so richly attest, the realities of international politics can be difficult to distinguish from the assumptions used to investigate or model them.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Possibly.  I've thought Behavioural Economics may work as a framework, also.

Anything that acknowledges that humans are social animals whose interactions are based largely in dominance hierarchy struggles and due to memory problems, poor future sense and cognitive bias will often take perceived short term gain over rational best interest is much better than the farce which is being prescribed right now.

Take primatology, add to that the thin veneer of abject bullshit that comprises what we refer to as "civilisation" and then assume that every facet of that thin veneer will be trumped the second a primate urge rears it's head and you'll be pretty close to figuring out why none of this could ever possibly work out the way everyone seems to think it ought to. The problem is not the system - any system would work just fine ANY system at all, that is. The problem is that we don't work. Bald apes are not capable of organising the worlds largest insect colony for obvious* reasons.


* so obvious that very few of them seem capable of seeing it