"I think the problem is that economics and all the other complex systems issues that hide behind politics are things that human beings are just not well-equipped to understand. We're bad at economics and social planning for the same reason we are bad at understanding the genome holistically. We just can't "grok" stuff like that."
I think we _can_ grok stuff like that, but not easily and not without study. I think that the main reason there are so many arguments about economics is that most people have not done that and because people know where various economic arguments lead and they've already made up their minds on those issues. Economics is just too fundamentally intertwined with public policy to be left to pure economists. Almost (and that's just a hedge) everybody who puts forth economic opinions online, for example, has some sort of political axe to grind.
I think we _can_ grok stuff like that, but not easily and not without study. I think that the main reason there are so many arguments about economics is that most people have not done that and because people know where various economic arguments lead and they've already made up their minds on those issues. Economics is just too fundamentally intertwined with public policy to be left to pure economists. Almost (and that's just a hedge) everybody who puts forth economic opinions online, for example, has some sort of political axe to grind.