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The science of economics
Economics studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services money, what is money and how does it move.
There is a weird phenomena in the scientific world which is the situation of economics as a branch of science. It starts from the very beginning when attempting to define the science. There are a lot of different definitions and some economists and course books even present vagueness of its definiton proudly since it symbolises the many viewpoints of the science.
Well this results in the very bad reputation of the science of economics very logically. I won't elaborate. I think it is clear that if you have a branch of science with an unclear definition, it really does give out unrealistic models and a bunch of weird axioms that all result in the first course book focusing on the unintuitive nature of marginalism (a lot of graphs illustrating the choice that one is willing to make out of all the decisions that result with the same amount of benefit)
Starting economics with marginalism is like starting chemistry with acids and alkali. The principles of acids and alkali are true but that is not the core of chemistry, that is one part of chemistry. You start learning chemistry by learning the structure of an atom. The marginalistic models can help forming economical ideas but they are not a point to start from. (to be honest, chemistry does present acids and alkali very early but that is because the phenomena of those are easily observed in every day life. Marginalism and its graphs can try to have x- and y-axis presented with student's possible grades (out of tests) and hours (put into studying) but the way the choice is constructed then has no place in every day life thinking. Every day life thinking is somewhat important aspect of economics (or should be) since money forms and moves by the everyday complexity of human life.)
The best definitions of economics focus on the 'economic agents' and present the science quite soundly when only focused on the economic agents. But what is an economic agent? I cannot think of an economic agent that would not in some way be dealing with money. Money and capital, which is just potential money. Is it not very clear that economics should be defined by questions relating to money?
Economics studies money, what different forms can money take and in what ways does it move. Is it not the question of every entrepreneur, investor and economist: how does the money move? If the movement is presented on a timeline can I locate myself/community/nation in the future in the same place with the money?
Since we also define the whole science with a question, what is money, the same entrepreneur, investor and economist should also be interested in all the potential forms money can have and all the potential of things (capital) to form into money. Money or the value of things is really in our hands. Human really decides what is valuable. If the leaders of a nation say that the nation is in bad shape and the future is uncertain how does that compare to the leaders telling the public otherwise? It just might compare in a way that creates value. Since an investor prefers investing in a country with "things going well" than a "country with a debt so high that it must destroy its whole healtcare and social welfare system" the nation can wait for the money from dumber investors or from no investor at all. This phenomena is a human creating (or in this case diminishing) value with no real relation to the market (what is the definition of market even here really) while at the same time on the other side of the world the casino-ian nature of markets pressure humans to create value out of nonexisting things.
A random on the internet put it well in the context of AI bubble and expensive prices of RAM: "The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn't really exist to be put into GPUs that haven't been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven't been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn't actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible."
– Human creates value out of nowhere and that should be in the core of economics
– Complexity economics and justification of money go well together, both admit the non-linear system of money(human). Complexity science in a way could focus on the question, how does money move. Justification of money focuses on what money is. Both overlap of course but to make a new foundation for economics that could work.
Economics – Study of money
- What is money? (justification of money + market belief)
- How does money move? (complexity economics + market belief) – Other theories and branches such as market economy, game theory, circular economy etc... --> Now economics would have a real foundation that compares with other sciences. The new foundation is reduced to the most important factor, money. One who wants to study the movement of money can talk about economic agents and so on... Capitalism doesn't vanish out of a sudden. It is still there but with the new (or real) foundation of economics it would not be attached to the root of economics therefore causing laissez-faire passiveness when faced with a societal problem.
– The real definition of economics is there, we just have to make it official. We have no expectation for better things as long as the foundation of economics, the science of the resources and power, commands the scientists to look for best choices in a batshitcrazy casioneconomy by thinking less, laissez-faire. Is that understandable? This is not a marginal negative, economics is a rotten apple in the academic world corrupting everything else.
Science does not achieve progress in life by making 'well-being' its goal. It makes progress by observing the environment clearly and giving that observation to human's use. Economics has it upside-down by making 'well-being' its goal but not really presenting us with good observations. Logically that then has us making bad choices very confidently instead of making good choices with some hesitation.
Most important question relating to this topic is: What do we lose by making 'money' the core of economics? In my opinion we lose nothing since all the 'economic agents' can be implemented in questions: What is money? How does money move?
If one really needs to be talking about 'economic agents' that can be done easily but now it has to be done by first defining what are 'economic agents'. ( = "Economic agents use money in the following manner...")
If one needs to talk about 'rational choice' that has to be done by first defining where the 'rational choice' is occurring.
Etc.
This is by miles a more scientific approach than having the traditional neoclassical axioms listed as facts describing the environment which will always look, sound and feel quite crazy. 'rational agent' or 'economic agent' etc. are now their separate questionable theories to be put under a limited playing environment where the participants acknowledge themselves as 'economic agents' making 'rational choices'.
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