Economics, Cultism and Self-serving Clerics

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Good economists are rare; most economists are priests upholding some of the secular faiths by which we're supposed to live.

Here's a remarkable reminder that we live in a world full of irrational cultism and clerical self-serving.

[Gute Ökonomen sind dünn gesät. Die meisten Angehörigen dieser Zunft sind Priester, die säkulare Glaubensbekenntnisse in Schuss halten für den Gebrauch durch unkundige Seelen.

Werfen Sie einen Blick auf das Zitat unten; es erinnert uns daran, wie sehr wir noch immer in einer Welt leben, die viel Platz bietet für vernunftwidrige Kultbegeisterung und klerikalen Eigennutz.

Ohne mit der Wimper zu zucken machen sich Ökonomen für leistungsbezogenes Hire-and-Fire stark, bei der Aussicht aber, dass das gleiche Prinzip auf sie angewandt werden soll, verfallen sie in Schockstarre.]

Remarkably, these economists never suggested the remedy that economists usually propose for bad performance: dismissal. There is a vast economics literature on the need for firing as a mechanism to properly motivate workers to perform. This report provides great evidence of the need for such a mechanism.

The proposals to combat groupthink (pdf) [link inoperative] are all very nice, but the bottom line is that the economists at the IMF all know that they will never jeopardise their careers by repeating what their bosses say. If we want economists at the IMF and other institutions who actually think for themselves, they have to know that they will endanger their jobs and their careers if they do mindlessly follow their boss.

Whenever I have raised this point in conversations with economists, they invariably think that I am joking. When I convince them that I am serious, they think the idea of holding economists responsible for the quality of their work to the point of actually jeopardising their careers is outrageously cruel and unfair.

The reality is that tens of millions of people across the globe have seen their lives wrecked because these economists did not know what they were doing – or worse, had doubts but chose the safer route of groupthink. It is outrageous that ordinary workers who were doing their jobs can end up unemployed, while the economists whose mistakes led to their unemployment can count on job security.

The source.

See als The Great Financial Crisis and Why Economics is Largely Theology.