Economics Exceptionalism

Andrew Gelman on the buffness of economics.  Actually, questioning how buff economics really is, but being an economics PhD student, I HAVE to think economics is buff... right?

The post analyzes the current status of economists and economics, and compares it to Freudian psych in the 1950s.  Basically, [insert economics/psych] is the belle of the ball, and everyone is ogling.  As always, I have some little thoughts about bits and pieces of the article (which is lengthy), and the other articles it points to (which get even lengthier).  The background of the debate, I can put my views in quickly, but the recent debate (relating to Rush Limbaugh's garbage) sparks some other (unrelated directly to economics exceptionalism) comments which I've been pondering about, but have yet to publicly display.


First, my take on economics: the quote, I think, is junk.  "Thinking like an economist simply means that you scientifically approach human social behavior" is talk by economists who want to think they're the most important people in the world because they "know how you think".  When you approach something scientifically (I know this, I have the equivalent of an Associates in science, I took bio, chem, and physics), you really do hold all things equal and test out different variables.  Economists try to quantify human qualities and interactions.  Sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists are social scientists, in that they try to hold social variables constant.  Economists just do it way more numerically.  There's nothing particularly special about economics when it comes to scientifically approaching human social behavior.

My second take on economics: pop (micro-)economist thinking, and whether Professor Gelman's take is an accurate one (which I don't entirely think is accurate, but is close).  Professor Gelman tries to explain how the paradox of people being rational and irrational works out, but I think the issue is an over-simplification of economist thinking.  People do tend to act rationally and tend to respond to incentives.  I think people can be slightly irrational, but not enough to need economists to cure social problems - at least, not from a macro standpoint.  Rather, I think the major problem is that asymmetric and incomplete information need to be cleared up and externalities need to be figured out.  A lot of "irrationality" comes from decision-makers analyzing the problem in a very narrow context.  The economist's job is to figure out what that narrow context is, and how to create a setting where people are behaving rationally in a larger, more general social context.  In other words, an economist is there to help people to pull their heads out of the sand.

This brings us to the "recent debate", regarding Limbaugh's diarrhea mouth.  Economist Steven Landsburg did some defending of Limbaugh, and the defense is supposed to be buff, because it's using economics(!) (according to Daniel Kuehn).  Noah Smith disagrees, and I think Landsburg's analysis is junk.  I don't see any economics - I barely see any logic.  The worst part in all this is that everyone is focusing on Limbaugh's stupid choice of words and compensation, which granted, is disgusting.  But people are ignoring that Sandra Fluke made an excellent argument that is unrelated to making sexy time.  I think getting paid (by someone else) to have sex (which is a bad conclusion to come up with in the first place) is indeed horrible, but that wasn't the point!  I think everyone needs to just tell all the people (conservatives) who are insulting Sandra Fluke that they're complete morons that clearly have comprehension problems.