The Study of Bullshit: Part Two

Yum, yum, lunch was good. Mum cooked some pig trotter and the rich, gelatino-meaty texture complements so well with the soft, watery porridge. Anyway, lets get back to part two of the study of bullshit.

Another criticism against economics rests on its dependence on so many other fields for its core and auxiliary knowledge. That economics draws its contents from physical sciences, social sciences, philosophy and arts irks me sometimes as it seems to suggest that there is little, if any, knowledge that is purely economics or economics per se. Physics can be uniquely identified with the quantum theory, chemistry with le chatelier principle, mathematics with euler formula, philosophy with inductive and deductive reasoning, arts with colour and space, but what about economics? Demand and supply? Such concept ought to belong to the everyday, commonsensical knowledge. It is so easy to understand that the more you demand for something, the higher the price that the seller is expected to charge since it's an opportunity for the seller to exploit your desire. In simple term, there is nothing original in economics as a much of it is the product of cut-and-paste from other areas of knowledge, then altered a little to mask the evidence of plagiarism.

On a further note, these messy, tangled relationships between economics and so many other fields of knowledge makes it vulnerable to change as a change in theory of any other fields would render it necessary for the study of economics to be revamped somehow. For instance, the change in the nature of the international relations from the colonial era to the free-nation modern time will affect the economic concept of trade and international business. The idea of slave trade has become a thing of the past and is irrelevant to be discussed in a modern economics textbook. Here, I am not advocating that change is undesirable; change is necessary for man to improve on his current set of knowledge in the quest for truth. What I am trying to point out here is that economics, by the "virtue" of its dependence on a great multitude of other schools of knowledge makes it highly unstable and prone to rapid change. Textbooks have to be revised so regularly and ideas learnt by new economists may run counter to the concept of the older generation of economists. More aptly, economics is an "established knowledge on shaky grounds".

What disgusts me most about the study of economics is its attempt to quantify human behaviour. I am staunch believer that every human is unique in his own right. It is impossible to find two people with the same thinking, action and decision for every circumstance. The difference between individuals gives a person his identity which distinguished from that of others. On the contrary, the economics book, which has brought me to sleep, has blatantly applied terms such as the "average economic man". I see it as a degradation to the ideal of the unique individual. It is like designating numbers out of everyone's preference and choice, then crunching the figure through some calculation to arrive at how we, as a whole, tend to behave. In doing so, there is no provision for our differences, something that economics does to treat us as goods, not as respectable human beings.

I wonder whether, after so much complaint, it is possible for me to read on economics objectively and without bias. Really don't know, unless i have split personalities, hehe! Oh dear, I'm supposed to scour the net for recipes of mushroom soup! Better start looking now....