I was very interested in economics in the middle 2000s - from a libertarian stance (this was before I was a Christian). I incorporated it within a larger theory of natural selection derived from the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann.
After spending hundreds of hours on that subject, I realised that it was misleading nonsense for two - linked - reasons. The first allowed the second. The first was that economists were dishonest - they were not interested in the truth, and certainly not concerned to be truthful.
In this respect, economists are merely typical of all modern academics - but I first noticed with economists. And what made me notice was their collective, mass response to the 'economic crisis' of 2008. Having following several individuals closely over the preceding years, the effortless speed and completeness with which they 'sold-out' shocked me into a reappraisal.
(I had similar Eureka moments with psychiatrists mass adoption of 'atypical antipsychotics' and their use of the agents in children and healthy outpatients; and the scientific Establishment's adoption of the CO2-Anthropogenic global warming scam.)
The ridiculous error of economists is to regard individual people, and groups of people, as essentially interchangeable units. That this was wrong was spelled out by the mass of evidence collected by Gregory Clark in his utterly-brilliant world history of economics "A Farewell to Alms".
I also worked it out for myself with a totally convincing thought experiment. The mainstream economists I read all stated that immigration was good for all countries under all circumstances. They had ingenious mainstream arguments to back them.
But all arguments depended upon regarding all people, and all groups and nations, as essentially the same - or trending to be the same. At most, economists would acknowledged the effect of 'education' - by incorporating a variable based on years, or level, of education - but this also assumed that all humans were equally educable.
This is contradicted by the entirety of coherent research into intelligence and personality (which are both very substantially heritable); but for me a single, reductio ad absurdum, thought experiment was decisive.
The economists I read were emphatic that the skills, education, intelligence, personality of immigrants did not make any difference to the fact that they were an economic benefit. Therefore - to maximise economic performance - there was no economic reason to limit migration, and indeed any barriers to migration should be removed.
Economists might introduce a proviso that certain things would need changing to ensure this - for example that wages should be set by the market, that benefits should not be excessive. But they were solid on this point that immigration was an economic benefit - and indeed, the failure of actual nations to meet their provisos did not deter economists from (in practice) a strongly (passionately) pro-immigration stance.
My thought experiment imagined there was a large nation of people who had a heritable and severe form of mental handicap; such that they would be wholly economically dependent - and would, indeed, each absorb the labour of several people in looking after them. I then supposed that the entire population of this nation - say 100 million - would migrate to somewhere like the USA or the UK.
Would it be of economic benefit to the UK (population 70 million) of enabling 100 million heritably dependent, resource absorbing, severely mentally-handicapped individuals to immigrate? Obviously Not. Therefore, the assumptions of economics were false. Such was my conclusion.
The reductio is to take to an imagined extreme the actual situation of heritable variation between individuals and cultures, and between groups and nations; and to clarify the actual situation.
This thought experiment reveals that exactly who immigrates matters decisively (as well as the numbers). Once this is understood, it can be seen that the whole categorisation of 'immigration/ immigrants' is a weasel-concept; a fake analytic term that conceals what is decisive behind a false generalisation.
From then onwards, I realised that the profession of economics is merely an exercise in providing pseudo-plausible excuses; a branch of the Establishment public relations industry.
Note: As always on this blog, I am not using the above as 'evidence' to persuade anyone that economics is subverted by its assumptions; I am describing what was in fact decisive in my reaching this conclusion.
