The twat, of course, was an economist. Ironically both of them were put in touch with me by their mentor, an economist running a think tank in an emerging economy, who was far humbler than his protege-twat.
We went through the usual stuff one always does with an economist who is sipping Sprite:
1) We just try to "maximize" a function. And that function need not be GDP.
2) If you don't like the system, don't invest.
3) When the recently-turned-banker self-deprecatingly said he didn't really think he was worth what he was for selling bonds: "But that's your marginal productivity and so you deserve it"
Because of these types of people, I have decided to start a new blog. And here is the first entry.
1) You can try to maximize and minimize all you want, and call yourself an economist of any stripe - labor, welfare, social, political - but your science is more "social" than "science". You could do everything you do today and make me gush with warm feelings for your ilk if you simply admitted for one moment that you cannot predict the economy the way I can predict how long it'll take an apple to hit the ground from 10 feet, not even to the flawed Newtonian precision. Instead of proudly declaring other aspects of life - such as social stability, pets and love - irrelevant to your maximizing function, declare it humbly and admit that you cannot model any of those, even though people are trading off between those and "money". Welcome to the real world.
2) I can't take really take my money out of the system, you stupid cunt. (Actually I am largely in cash, but more due to laziness). If it were a gold-backed currency whereby the printers of money cannot continuously debase the currency, I would love to keep my ounce of gold at home. Fiat money and the "desire" of central bankers to keep "moderate inflation" - which is protecting borrowers at the expense of savers - mean I do not have an option but see my money depreciate in the bank or get wiped out every time the system blows up. Also, deflation is not bad, it is only frowned upon because it hurts borrowers and we are so addicted to credit we cannot fathom an alternate world view. And no matter how you trumpet buyer-beware, the fact is the millions of people have no individual control over their money and the securities it is invested in. This is why there is no real challenge to the corporate / managerial plutocracy from shareholders today. Institutions that manage that pension money, your savings, etc, not always maliciously, have destroyed great wealth because they are simply not capable of standing up the way an actual shareholder does. If you invested, you'd do it solely to see returns - you're not going to be paid to invest your own money. They get paid a salary. A big fat one. I can't see the alignment of interest. So please do not tell me to take my money out of the system.
3) Tulips. To everyone who comes up and says a) a banker's salary is a direct result of his productivity and b) the market has judged that his marginal productivity is ___. Please shut them up by pointing out no one really still knows what the productivity of an extra bulb of tulip was but it sure did not stop them from selling their homes to buy one.
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