“Dismal science faces dismal future”
This is from Australia’a ABC News
Dismal science faces dismal future
They call it the dismal science, but it is the future of economics that looks dismal in Australia right now.
Sydney University’s Business School jettisoned its economics discipline into the Faculty of Arts two years ago.
That is after it earlier ejected the less orthodox Political Economy discipline into Arts, along with Government and International Relations.
Now the University of Western Sydney is looking to get rid of economics altogether.
The University has presented staff in its School of Business with a formal change proposal that would see an end to the bachelor of economics and several other programs.
In its formal change proposal, UWS says it will cut 29 full-time positions, around 10 of which will come from the discipline of economics and finance becoming simply finance.
One of those potentially in the firing line is arguably UWS’s most publicly prominent academic, economics professor Steve Keen.
“I’ve had hedge funds funding me, I’ve had the Institute for New Economic Thinking (supported by billionaire George Soros) funding me, I’ve got an international profile and I find it ridiculous that the university is simply deciding, oh well, let’s let all that go,” he said over his mobile phone from a roadside in Mexico.
“And of course a major source of decent publicity for Western Sydney has been my activities in the last five years.”
However, aside from the loss of publicity the university might suffer, Professor Keen says it will be sacrificing intellectual rigour in an area where it has been leading to this point.“[Getting rid of the economics discipline is] doubly or triply ironic because, not only is it an economic crisis that’s dominating the world’s decision making today, but people realise there’s a need for an alternative perspective on economic theory and economics at the University of Western Sydney has prided itself on giving a broad pluralist education to students, teaching them both the mainstream and non-mainstream views for the last 15 years,” he added.
“Of course, I work there, and I’m one of the few economists acknowledged as having seen this crisis coming, so it’s bizarre that the university can ignore all that and simply propose to cut the department completely, simply as a way of coping with costs.”
UWS has told staff the change is needed because business school enrolments have fallen markedly over the past two years, and look set to fall sharply again in 2013.
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
THE PERVERSE INCENTIVES FOR CAPTURING CULTURE:
The Business Model of culture was rejected in the 1950s and again when systems theory superseded over the decades old hierarchical power scalar and behavior modification as
the prefered “managerialist’s” organizational control tool.
Now it rises again and attacks the University System as it seeks to convince the world that our survival depends on their narrow approach to their self-serving “disciplined” market.
But perhaps it is much more aggressive than that? Perhaps it is an attempt to literally “program” the next generation of thought back to their managerial cosmology?
When I taught history at the California Institute of Technology in the mid1960s economics, like history, philophy, and modern languages was located in the “Humanities Division.” That was where scientists and technologists thought it should be and I thought them right then and find nothing wrong with making economics one of the humanities now. It is simply true, as following this blog continually demonstrates, that econosics is not a science and probably never will be. So join people in the humanities. We are quite happy to be humanists.
This is an cardinal and arrogant version of a quantification as science and a pure elitists view of technological (consumer technology) knowledge devoid of the base root of scientia itself. Having raised this philosophical quibble, however, Robert appears to missing the objective substance and the core point of the article:
“…Now the University of Western Sydney is looking to get rid of economics altogether.”
Can you place that in Numbers Robert? I think I can help you from the non-science side:
………………………………………………………..ZERO………………………………………………………
Frankly Robert, considering your background and works in publication, i am very surprised at the limitations of your comment above: ( readers might see: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-R.-Locke/e/B001JS24K6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1)
(my favorite):
Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance (Economic Controversies) by Robert R. Locke and J. C. Spender (Oct 11, 2011)
Read the “customer reviews” here:
Why would people at West Sydney University wish to get rid of economics altogether? Give that serious consideration Bruce. I’ve never found it of much use in studies of compartive industrialization. I joined this blog espeically to help transform it into something more useful for historians. But what I find is academic interest groups trying to make us believe that economics is what they say it is. That’s not open inquiry, neither is the use of pejorative terms when discussing my comments.
Economics is not a natural science, like physics, but it is nonetheless a science. The historicist view that there exist no economic laws is simply wrong, and if we agree that economic laws do exist, then why would economics not qualify for being a science? The problem is that modern mainstream economics is relying on empiricism, which is not the proper methodology for economic science. We cannot create repeatable experiments, and there are no constants against which anything can truly be ‘measured’ in economics, but one can nonetheless deduce the laws of economics in causal-realist fashion, using logic.
Neolassical economics is a formal not an empirical science. Erich Schneider described the approach: “Theoretical propositions are always propositions of the form , If A, then B. If this or that assumption is fulfilled then this or that assumption is valid. The theoretical proposition always has the character of logical necessity and is according to the assumptions made either right or wrong. A theoretical proposition, like a dogma, cannot be denied. This does not mean the proposition is wrong, it only means it cannot be appliewd to current circumstances (ist nicht aktuell) Problem is that neoclassical economists wished after WWII to turn economics into an empirical science. Much troubl ensued.
The book traces the loss of managers’ earlier social concerns, amply encouraged by management education’s transformation since the 1960s, especially in the US. It also questions not only the social ethics of the US management caste, but its management efficacy compared to systems of management that are highly employee participative and dependent, such as in Germany and Japan. Today’s attempts to “bolt on” ethics and social responsibility courses, the authors argue, are mere window-dressing, a public relations move that cannot get to the heart of the matter. Only fundamental reforms in civil society and business schools can really make a difference.
Real price histories are very instructive
http://www.showrealhist.com/RHandRD.html
They are seldom shown, in order to sucker the people!
“…Why would people at West Sydney University wish to get rid of economics altogether? Give that serious consideration Bruce. I’ve never found it of much use in studies of compartive industrialization.” Robert R. Locke
Scientia potentia est: Knowledge is power. Managerialism, as you well know is an extension of privatization agendas all over the world. The argument concerning the measured methodology and credibility of economics as a science is one of critical import. Certainly the fictional 1st principles that inform neo-classical economic models are pseudo-science, but this is not the foundation to why University systems are undergoing a perestroika of their own self interests. Economics as a business model brought us to a narrow view of appealing to authority as science and institutional market interests. But it is no mere irony that a University in Australia will now seek to pull financing on an entire discipline, because …as you must already well know …it is happening to other disciplines at the same time all over the world …and here in the States.
To pretend that this is part of the history of ideas and the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative science/ or / between the sciences (gold standards) and less precise “humanities” is an insult. To pretend that this is merely ironic or poetic justice is short sighted and pure academic myopia. And for you to pretend that this is personal
or merely pejorative…is merely an unfortunate egocentric sensitivity on your part.
I have argued rigorously and figuratively that the abuses of market based economics is a crude injustice and posturing as science is both corrupt and fraudulent. This corruption of science is at the hands of a movement of managerialism that is embedded in economic cold war ideologies, and has academic roots at least as far back as the 1920s:
“”The main origin of Managerialism lay in the human relations movement that took root at the Harvard Business School in the 1920s and 1930s under the guiding hand of Professor Elton Mayo. Mayo, an immigrant from Australia, saw democracy as divisive and lacking in community spirit. He looked to corporate managers to restore the social harmony that he believed the uprooting experiences of immigration and industrialization had destroyed and that democracy was incapable of repairing.” [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism
The bigger story here is what is happening to the University system itself; not merely one rat in the basket of time. That is an oversight of the highest magnitude. The bigger picture is the demise of academia in the hands of institutionally sanctioned administrators that are now deciding what will be science and what will be humanities on the basis of markets. The scope and scale of this is that managerialism has come to dictate to the majority who willingly accept its dictates because it happens to fall within their particular politicized sentiments. The insidious acceptance of this determines not just the outcome of what the nature of sciences or humanities will become, but whether the pejorative markets and their servant administrators will determine the very existence of traditional disciplines. And when will it be my anthropology or when will it be your history that is next?
The bigger picture is the demise of academia in the hands of institutionally sanctioned administrators that are now deciding what will be science and what will be humanities on the basis of markets.
This is the theme I have been pushing in my work for more than a quarter century. It is also my chief gripe with economics as it ensconed itself in business schools and economics. The triumph of neoclassical economics was one of the instrumentalities the adminnisgtrators used to turn the universities into money mills. That issue was not the conflict between science and the humanities but the university as a SEAT OF KNOWLEDGE VS THE UNIVERSITTY ASS A MONEY MILL. That is the major issue of our time. Whether economics is a science of a humanity is of much less importance. “Unfortunage egocentric sensitivity on my part.” How can I dialogue with you if you insist on insulting me. Read The Higher Education in America, by Thorestin Veblen, 1918. My work continues his theme.
I concede an apology for the insult taken, and I am fully in agreement with your work and thinking. Perhaps the fact that it has been brought out here for view is the tonic in the bitter tea of exchanges? Good wishes to you, and I do thank you for your strident stance over the years against administrative blindness and self service. The “storm surge” is “here” now and we must not only be vigilant, but aggressive against the tides.
Regards:
Bruce
Thanks Bruce for the kind words. Your comments make me think and reappraise and I am grateful for them. And I don’t hold grudges.
Bob
pater tenebrarum @ #7: “there are no constants against which anything can truly be ‘measured’ in economics, but one can nonetheless deduce the laws of economics in causal-realist fashion, using logic”.
Failure to understand this is why most of today’s economists deserve a dismal future, but the dismal science is necessary and needs to be cheered up by answering Malthus’s population concerns with error-correcting logic.
In the small, largely self-sufficient communities of Malthus’s day, population was biologically limited by famines and plagues. That is no longer true, but how can families in today’s large cities intelligently harmonize diverse family sizes and the timing of pregnancies if their localities don’t have a population target range and feedback telling them what is actually happening?
Hi Dave,
I’ve been unable or unwilling to comment on many issues for some time, though I have been reading and monitoring the Blog and RWER as best I can.
You pose a very good question. The short answer is that they can’t control family sizes. I hope to lay out a few layers here, but I can’t possibly offer any kind of solution.
First, it is necessary to distinguish between chronic and acute conditions. In Malthus’ day, and in many non-industrial areas of the world today, the famines and plagues were relatively constant, a part of the environment, so that means that those conditions were always a threat. They became very acute threats in times of crop failure and the attendant social disruption. I have in mind the Irish Potato Famine, the Bubonic Plague in Europe, especially during the Middle Ages, and more recent famines in the Horn of Africa. It is easier to respond to an acute crisis. It is more easily recognized. If the condition is chronic, it becomes something that people get used to. It becomes accepted, so few recognize that anything is really wrong. You don’t know that the front suspension of your car is shot until someone else drives it and notices that to maintain a straight line on the road, the steering wheel has to move through a 180 degree arc.
Second, I can see the role of industrialization. You directly remove people from working on the land, so that the people in industrial societies often fail to appreciate its importance. (Nod to the Georgists who read this blog). In some ways, agriculture is just another form of industry. Another effect is the meme of technological progress – we can invent or innovate our way out of any problem. Clearly, this is linear thinking applied to the idea of progress. Very few feed back loops exist linear thinking of this sort. If we look at a new production process and call it more efficient, we often fail to realize that the new production process uses less of one resource but more of another. Combined with the idea that unlimited growth is key to prosperity, people are set up to misinterpret any information that comes back to them. If the feedback says don’t do it, its just wrong, it becomes a technical issue to ‘fix’, which starts the problem all over again. It is not interpreted as a signal to change you behavior and outlook at a fundamental level
Tied with industrialization is the role of education. As levels of education tend to increase, birthrates and family sizes tend to decline. This is particularly true with respect to women’s access to education. However, given the way the world economy is organized, some information does not filter back to those in industrial societies. The information signal is both rerouted and misinterpreted. It is rerouted to non-industrial areas, where the often chronic and sometime acute conditions of hunger and famine and disease lead to higher birth rates because of low productivity and high infant mortality. It is misinterpreted as being a moral failure of the people in non-industrial societies, which prevents people in industrialized societies from examining the the way the world economy is organized.
There are further complications of course, but these jumped immediately to mind once I read your question. I tried to revise and reorganize a little before posting, but the paragraph on education was particularly troublesome, but I realize that a lot of this is just thinking out loud. Those are my immediate thoughts. Best to all,
Hi Jeff, good to hear from you again.
“You pose a very good question. The short answer is that they can’t control family sizes. I hope to lay out a few layers here, but I can’t possibly offer any kind of solution”.
By “they” I presume you mean governments who still only understand “control” in terms of force and threat. If so I agree with you in the context of Western democracies, although China provides a counter-example in locally policed communities now and the Malthusian decimation of the Irish Catholic population by laissez-faire economics a historical one: sadly of increasing relevance.
So horrid are these counter-examples that is why it is so important to understand that there is a different type of control, information rather than force-based, which was only discovered during the Hitler war and first made public in 1948. I worked with one of its first implementations, the control system for the Heenan & Froude dynamometer and industrial drives, at the beginning of my working life. That has developed into the PID servo, an integrated circuit which does not force one to do anything but “serves” the controller by putting together the information it needs for self-control.
The theory is called Cybernetics (Greek for steersman) because, if you understand what you are looking for, you can see it in the steering of a ship. The captain sets the course, the steersman reacts to negative feedback from the compass, the mate corrects the course for accumulated sideways drift and the lookout tries to anticipate danger ahead. Today the captain can set the course and allow an autopilot to take over. For a local community to voluntarily stay near enough on course for an agreed population, its crew need not just up-to-date knowledge of what the population actually is, but how far births and newcomers are outstripping deaths and leavers, allowing for actual and intended pregnancies, i.e. births expected in the future.
You cannot offer me a solution, you say? The point of my letter was that I was offering you one.
The big failing of Adam Smith’s programme of specialisation is that the training provided for politicians and economists still doesn’t include this sort of thing, or even awareness that information science exists, offering control of errors as an alternative to legal and financial railroading of citizen’s actions.
The University’s (UWS)comment that the moves are due to declining student numbers begs the question :why? Not enough jobs for economists? Too difficult a subject? I can imagine Steve’s mathematics and programming might be accessible to very few students. All this assumes that bums on seats is the crucial factor. But how much of the department’s public funding is research based? I imagine Steve’s impact factor wouldn’t rate highly if the criterion was citations in highly ranked neoclassical journals.
There are probably relatively few students in astronomy around the world, because it’s not a great career generator. Nevertheless the subject survives and advances human knowledge spectacularly. It would be a tragedy for economics if UWS, were to ditch one of the world’s few progressive, reality-recognizing economics departments.
Steve’s economics is much appreciated on this blog and righly so. But economics is not because it has not, as a discipline, advanced our state of knowledge, like astronomy has. If research universities are placed where staff collectively advances the state of knowledge, there are lots of subjects that don’t belong there. Originally there were no chair of economics, mechanical engineering, or buiness economics in universities. They were admitted after a long fight; now some of them e.g., economics are being questioned. That’s all.