Progress Report:
Stats Exam: finished. think i dropped 4% of my grade

Well, its been an age and a half since my last post, for reasons that escape even me. Guess I don't actually have all that much to say after all.

Most recently, I've been pondering whether I should go ahead with my Economics second degree or not. I've come to realise that I do not really believe in modern economics, per se. It has become too mathematical, which is not really the issue. The mathematical skills learned would definitely help in understanding academic journals.

The problem is really in that the journals do nothing but reaffirm what is already in my textbooks, about the supremacy of orthodox economic theory. Unfortunately, I don't think orthodox economic theory makes very much sense. The only reasonable approximate to a perfectly competitive market is a financial market, and even that can be called into question.

Ceteris paribus is the biggest lie in human history. Okay, maybe not. Time Magazine did declare that God is dead. So its the second biggest lie in human history. It works wonderfully as an assumption to simplify things so specific factors in an economy can be analysed, but that is all it is, an assumption.

The problem though, is weighing intellectual honesty against economic value. The Economics degree has a value. As alien as orthodox economics is to real life, it has an actual economic value in the search for employment. Investment banks love economists, even though the knowledge does not seem to apply. Yet, I am not certain I am willing to put myself through 4 years of theory I do not believe in just for that. I barely survived Business, Government and Society as it is. For those who are thankfully spared the module, its a half-baked ethics course on the stakeholder model of management, which is even more devoid of intellectual foundations than modern-day orthodox economics, whose only sin is to believe in its own untenable assumptions.

I would look into development economics in terms of alternative theories, but the basic courses... Oh the pain of redoing macro and micro economics with mathematical models I believe are essentially useless.

Well, so I ponder on, while I read Omerod's The Death of Economics.

Its been fun though. Might just do the degree to be academic. The business degree is clearly not exercising my brain, or will not once this law module is done with.

Adieu, mon ami.