Hmm, I will try to respond without reading much of the replies ITT, perhaps I will repeat something but oh well. Also feel free to skip, it's NOT particularly smart or educated in any way hehe.
>Is economics a bunch of lies?Not quite. But it IS tied into politics heavily and is based on a bunch of political beliefs. Classical economics is based on beliefs of a certain social group hehe.
Now, I think there are at least two ways of looking at economics and both are employed but at times people think economics is only one of them:
- according to the first, economics is akin to managing a factory: good and services come 'round according to a set of predetermined rules - or perhaps there are no rigid rules but the "economy" concerns itself mostly/only with the "functioning" aspect, i.e. to build a car, one needs a long list of prerequisites to be met, both in personnel qualities and the goods provided - why a car should be made is out of the question tbh (generally it's answered as "we need a device to move something from point A to point B" I guess)
Perhaps I'm bad at explaining this, but the point is we leave human motivations from doing anything out of the picture and just focus on managing goods and services. It is certainly reductionist but it's powerful in a sense if you don't master it, you actually cannot get anything done. So, when people say "let's fix the economy" I think a lot of think think like that, let's restore the functioning of the exchange machine. That "definition" of economics is free from any politics but we cannot make a functioning economy without bringing humans into picture.
(TBH perhaps I'm conflating economics and technology a bit but I am myself not sure if one can easily separate the two)
- so, according to the second, economics is humans doing favors to each other. We realize we cannot fulfill our needs by ourselves, so we use others to do our bidding, quid pro quo. So, economy is the art of making deals and related stuff. Also, economics is the way to control others, control society, economies are complex machines of social nature. Therefore it's heavily political. In fact, "favor for a favor" and "mutual exchange" are definitely not the only principles to run society by. Likewise, humans are vile and do things to distort the "fair" picture by doing clearly "unfair" things.
So with that in mind, economics is inseparable from humans which do not necessarily eve
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