… and disband their departments

The disastrous flaws in mainstream economics,
and how economies can serve our total wellbeing

 

 

Am I being too harsh? Too confronting?

Well, mainstream economists created the conditions to crash the global economy, resulting in trillions of dollars worth of lost production and misery for millions of people, including a rise in suicides from despair in places like Greece. Political instability is rising dramatically, plausibly due to most people feeling, justifiably, they are missing out on the wealth being garnered by the few.

If an engineer designs a bridge that falls down, we can expect he’ll get the sack, or at least his career will be seriously dented.  Few or no economists have lost their jobs because of that monumental stuff-up. Instead the profession closed ranks, claimed the crash could not have been predicted by anyone (though many had) and made a few noises about needing to reconsider some ideas (resulting in very little, in terms either of ideas or of public policy).

In fact the crash was predictable on the basis of readily available information, and predictable because of starkly obvious flaws in the ideas, models and methods used by mainstream economists.

It seemed the message needed to be spelt out directly and unambiguously. Is this the most effective approach? Who knows? Nothing else has worked yet.

The opening chapter may seem at first to be just a spray and a rant. It does use heavy irony, but it is only recounting what has happened, and foreshadowing very defensible claims.

Mainstream economics has multiple fundamental flaws that cause great harm to people’s lives, and to the planet.  This book concisely and simply explains the flaws, and uses modern knowledge and systems ideas to show how market economies can be more sensibly managed to deliver a healthy and more equitable world.

eBook available at

Amazon.com.au (preferable for Aussies?)

or  Amazon.com

or Amazon.co.uk

Hardcopy (print-on-demand) now also available at

The Book Depository (free shipping from UK; easy, but many ‘book-miles’ for non-UK buyers)
CreateSpace
Amazon.com (with several related outlets)

Praise for Sack the Economists:

This book raises many interesting questions, most importantly, why does anyone take economists seriously when it comes to discussing the economy?
– Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington D.C.

Geoff Davies has a very good idea. Economics has locked itself into an intellectual cul-de-sac.  Even its failure to anticipate the global economic crisis was not enough to force it out.  So let’s sack the economists and let real scientists take over this vital but currently dangerous discipline.
– Steve Keen, Economist and author of the popular book Debunking Economics

With delightful wit and insightful analogies, geophysicist Geoff Davies dissects the inconsistencies — and the inanities — of mainstream economics. Don’t blame Adam Smith, he makes clear, for the mess this mainstream has become. Blame the intellectually lazy and morally obtuse careerists who practice an economics that in no way, shape, or form resembles the science they claim it to be. In the end, Sack the Economists helps us understand, plutocracy never works — and neither does an economics that refuses to discomfort our plutocrats.
– Sam Pizzigati, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., and author of The Rich Don’t Always Win.