Monday, June 08, 2009

Another Blow to Utopian Conservative Ideology

Behavioral Economics explains why the conservative totem of Free-Market Fundamentalism is a fallacy. IF free markets existed (they don't) they would not work as the pitchmen of the GOP would have us all believe: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104803094&ft=1&f=1001

Why not?

-Humans are easily overwhelmed by choices
-Humans are easily overwhelmed by information
-Humans don't have the information they need or the time and resouces to gather it
-Humans routinely make poor decisions even when they have good information
-Humans are lazy by nature
-Humans are not rational actors in their own self-interest as economic models assume
-Humans are not as intelligent, on average as economists who assume that other humans will make decisions like they do.

Once again we see the wishful thinking of conservative dogma running headlong into the pillars of human nature and getting knoocked back squarely on its ass.

2 comments:

Nemo said...

Replace the word "Humans" with "Sean Cranley" and you may have something there.

fitnesslightning said...

Humans are easily overwhelmed by choices. Yes, and many then repeatedly make the wrong ones. And at what point is it their responsibility.

-Humans are easily overwhelmed by information. Quitmultitasking, and concentrate.

-Humans don't have the information they need or the time and resouces to gather it. Turn off the TV and read a book.

-Humans routinely make poor decisions even when they have good information. We used to call that being stupid, now we cant.

-Humans are lazy by nature. Not all, I run my own business, and was here at 6am, Ill leave about 7.

-Humans are not rational actors in their own self-interest as economic models assume. ??

Humans are not as intelligent, on average as economists who assume that other humans will make decisions like they do. Dont go into dept, save for save for a rainy day. Live conservatively. I know, those three are rocket science, lets get an economic professor to teach them.

So what i gather Sean, is humans are stupid, except for government humans, so lets let them smart government humans make all the decisions.

my point being: Lets work on the stupid humans instead of the economic model. We may see some success.