Unlearning Economics

New breadtuber:

Edited by jjjj2 on Dec 26th 2020 at 8:11:46 AM

While I agree with the "BreadTube" consensus more than 90% of the time when they discuss social issues, their economic takes are just...Wrong...Indefensibly so for people like ContraPoints who prides herself in extensively researched and exceptionally produced video essays.


Regrettably, this "Unlearning Economics" fellow, if he is indeed one and the same with the author of the blog of the same name, is NOT the person to be debunking the bad economic takes of the left, given his own support for quack economic ideas such as degrowth and MMT that are barely more credible among contemporary economists than the Labor Theory of Value.


With that being said, this particular video isn't egregious in terms of it's explanation of the problems with PhilosophyTube's analysis of the "housing crisis", and some of his less radical proposals to address the crisis at least have some empirical support. Though I bristle when he uses "technocratic" as a pejorative.


But I would argue that deregulation of zoning laws which encourage single family homes and enable NIMBYism coupled with investments in infrastructure to support high urban density and the implementation of Land Value Taxes are superior because they represent genuinely workable policy instruments to ameliorate the issues with urban housing costs.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 27th 2020 at 11:25:42 AM

I’ve heard about degrowth, but what’s MMT?

Modern Monetary Theory. It's, well, an interesting idea with some really fatal flaws, but some people just refuse to let go of it. The basic premise is based on the really stable rates of inflation that have been observed in the post stagflation/oil crisis global economy. MMT basically says that this means that a country with its own currency doesn't have to worry about accumulating debt at all, and can safely print money without worrying about inflation as long as we can continue taking money back out of the economy with fiscal instruments like taxation.

The biggest problem is that MMT assumes money neutrality is false, which disagrees with a lot of empirical evidence to the contrary. Certain implementations of MMT seem workable, but more or less end up looking the same as the modern central bank system, but using fiscal policy to target inflation instead of monetary policy. There's no obvious advantage to this, and a serious disadvantage from a political economy perspective in that it depends on elected officials being able to muster the votes to raise taxes to respond to an overheating economy.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 27th 2020 at 1:20:11 PM

With regards to this particular video: I have not watched PhilosphyTubes video on the housing crisis. I have watched his Chernobyl video and I remember thinking his assertion about the housing marking in that video was abject nonsense (rest of the video was good though). I felt like this video did a good job of going over Olly's claims.

Edited by jjjj2 on Dec 27th 2020 at 1:24:27 PM

The main valid takeaways from MMT are like, austerity is a lot less useful than people seem to think it is, and if a country has to print a ton of money due to a disaster or a severe recession or depression, it's unlikely to lead to rampant hyperinflation or economic disaster.

Like, a country ballooning the deficit in order to make sure there isn't a widespread homelessness crisis or to make sure that everyone has the money to live during the pandemic isn't a bad thing, because the alternative is to guarantee a much worse economic crash later on.

And austerity is a shitty economic policy most of the time anyway and it only makes sense when the economy is based on a specific stockpile of gold or whatever. Otherwise, it just results in cutting necessary services and government functions. It's especially hypocritical from the GOP in the US who will wail about being fiscally responsible and then turn around and consistently increase the military budget to truly insane levels.

Edited by Zendervai on Dec 27th 2020 at 2:10:46 PM

That's not really distinct from the prescriptions for a recession you get from orthodox Keynesian Economists, however, which is one of the secondary criticisms of MMT that I mentioned; any realistic implementation of "MMT policy" looks close enough to Keynesianism that it doesn't really warrant being called some new strain of economic thought, and the things that people identifying with MMT say that genuinely diverge from mainstream economics do so in a way that is blatantly in disagreement with both empirical evidence and theoretical models built from that evidence.

From r/badeconomics moderator, Wumbotarian

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 27th 2020 at 2:42:23 PM

You mentioned Lavor Theory of Value earlier. What is it, and why do economists not put too much stake in it?

Edited by Aquaconda on Dec 29th 2020 at 9:13:46 AM

There is an Economics thread on the OTC area.

Well anyway he released a second video on Shaun and train privatization:

He feels this video is more a companion to Shauns rather than a direct takedown, because while he agrees that privatization sucked, nationalization had a lot of similar problems to privatization. His solution is if I'm understanding correctly is something similar to worker cooperatives, or stronger unions.