Could it be that economics is more of a social science than a physical one, and therefore its “laws” cannot be expected to have the same level of stringency and consistency as the laws of physics?
No, it’s economics that’s wrong.
Whats even funnier is that physics is also vibes based in some areas. The laws of thermodynamics are not real laws, they are based on statistic likelihood but can in theory be broken.
Newtons equations for gravity are still widely used despite being disproven for better part of a century.
Sometimes, accurate enough approximations are more useful than the complicated reality.
cough quantum physics cough
I studied quantum mechanics for half a year and I can’t even prove quantum mechanics are not Lasagna spilled on paper let alone prove whether they are vibe based…
Spooky action at a distance
Physical reality has a lot of little exceptions like that too. Compression is really strong until it buckles - totally different formula. Most materials compress when they freeze - but water expands. Forget turbulence, man. What’s the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter? That’s right, a silly nonsense number.
And another silly nonsense number we decided to call “E” keeps popping up all over the place in nature/ the universe, for no discernable reason.
iirc, e and pi are actually somewhat related
edit: was curious about this so I went looking and found a stackexchange thread on the topic. It was Euler’s identity and the gaussian integral I was thinking of that relates those two numbers.
Devs got lazy
That’s
eto you!
Economics is a social science (and often a political tool) pretending to be a physical science. If they don’t want to be treated the way they are, they should drop the act.
I studied econ as a minor and I don’t recall any of my professors ever making the pretense that it was some sort of ultimate or incontrovertible truth. In fact, I’m fairly certain that’s where I learned the expression “all models are wrong, but some are useful”.
I remember cracking open a textbook, learning about rational market actors, realizing that a lot of economics is based on the assumption that people act rationally, and decided the whole thing was bullshit.
5 years later, I realized that despite deeply flawed premises, economics as a science still has a lot of helpful models and theories and is a good thing to learn.
That’s a good point, and kinda reminds me of the Efficient Market Paradox, which basically says an efficient market is impossible since there would be no profit to be made, and hence, no point in participating. But if people drop out because of that, inefficiencies will invariably pop again, thus presenting an opportunity for those seeking to profit, which of course only ends up restoring the efficiency.
So in essence, the market is always just teetering on the edge of efficiency, never fully getting there yet never straying too far either. Perhaps there’s a corollary here (or a similar paradox) that explains why the assumption of rationality, as ridiculous as it seems at face value, is in fact also valid and reasonable.
Sometimes, independent central banks feel like a secular version of a theocratic council of elders.
Yes
And yes
I’m honestly surprised at the number of people overexplaining the comic.
Right? Yeah lemmy get my economics freak on in the (checks notes) comicstrips community!
Helllooooo Ladiiieeees! finger guns
You posted a comic about the law of supply and demand, but in reality you invoked Cunningham’s law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Nope, fuck you. I’m a rebel and refuse to follow your law-bait
Curses! And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling (checks notes) comicstrips kids!
If you’re the creator: I’ll (ironically) try to explain why. The text itself has almost no joke, no (strong) punchline. The biggest joke is “Dinosaurs discussing economics while rampaging”, which is ridiculous(thus the joke). There are some text jokes, but they don’t stand out in the dry matter that’s being discussed.
Due to the denseness of the topic being discussed, it feels more akin to reading a wiki article than a comic. The text distracts from the ridiculousness (or possibly a joke about housing? I dunno?). The text becomes the focus, thus that text is being discussed rather than the joke.
/this is the end of my ted talk about jokes I actually don’t know much about.
OP is probably not the author, Ryan North has been making dinosaur comics for ages now. There’s over 4000 comics with the same dinosaurs discussing a lot of different things.
OP is definitely not author Ryan North who has been making the exact same comic strip with amazingly fantastic dialogue changes for years and is definitely worth checking out and hitting the “random” button a few hundred times, if one likes language, science, and comedy
No degree or permutation of “I don’t get the joke”, “here’s my essay on this joke”, or “yes you were joking but let’s debate” can still surprise me on lemmy. Half of the fediverse is Mojo JoJo
Ugh. I feel dirty for defending economists, but…
Laws are just commonly observed relationships, and observed relationships always exist within a given set of boundaries and assumptions.
Change the boundaries or the context, and the law may no longer apply.
Consider Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation:
F ~ Mm/r^2
This observed relationship doesn’t hold under very large M or very small r. In those contexts, a different relationship is required. That doesn’t invalidate this one, though. It just maks it situationally useful.
Which all of these laws are.
He has a point in that economics should be more humble. It’s a social science, not a hard science, and it should treat itself with the same level of introspection and humility as sociology or psychology.
I’ve heard that the price of McDonald’s food has doubled and people are definitely not saying “hey you get what you pay for” when it comes to McDonald’s price increase and they’re definitely not buying MORE of it.
You pay what you get for
If I decide to eat at a McDonald’s (which is a very rare occurrence) I refuse to do so without their stupid 2 for 1 coupons which are the only way to get a reasonable enough price.
It’s called a “law” because it’s a principle behind how something works, not because it would be incontestably true. There are other examples of this, like Haldane’s law having exceptions for fruit flies and ruki law working only partially for Balto-Slavic languages (it works for *u *i, not for *r *k).
In all cases, apparent violations are typically easy to explain, for example in Veblen goods there’s value associated with the price itself, as a status symbol. “Look, I’m rich! I could be paying 10k for this good, but instead I’m paying 100k! Not a big deal~” (translation: “I buy overpriced shite. I’m an idiot and I deserve to be treated as one”).
…sorry for being the unfunny guy who explains the comic. I couldn’t help it.
A helium balloon does not invalidate the law of gravity.
The law of supply and demand describes market forces, but these are not the only forces that act on prices. Perceived value, fomo, FArtS, and even your basic fraud, all of these are also forces that act on pricing. Economics, like physics, does not happen in a frictionless vacuum.
That’s not falling up. That’s a phenomenon that is explained by physics. The Dinosaur Comic is saying that if gravity was found to be non compliant once, the law of gravity would be rewritten to make it make sense within the knowledge at hand. Economics has these regular events that invalidate a defined “Law” and they ignore it.
Good luck finding any nontrivial law that applies to each and every instance of a human construct. “Money can be exchanged for goods and services” until you show up at a store with 10 kilograms of 1-cent coins. A single violation (or even many) don’t mean the underlying law (or rule or principle or guideline or whatever ‘less strict’ version you want to call it) is bad.
Newton’s gravity is wrong. There’s no arguing about that. But still every middle-schooler around the world learns it because it is ‘good enough’ in all but extraordinarily special cases.
You must be new to science. Congrats on starting the journey! To help with your learning, you should know Newton gave 3 laws which hold up surprisingly well. Check them out!
Something else important is that gravity exists as a constant and can be found based on how much mass is involved. For example, on earth, it is a set acceleration of 9.8 m/s2.
As a counter point, economics is allergic to labeling the axis on graphs except to show vague ideas like supply and demand. It is a field of study based on salesmanship and social inertia, not real science.
The intro to the very article you linked states 3 exceptions lol
Someone clearly never got past Econ 101. Get an education.
I knew some tard burger would come here to say this.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/435/
Except those regular events aren’t ignored, and they don’t invalidate economic laws any more than helium balloons. When regular events are found to be non-compliant, the laws of economics are rewritten to make it make sense with the knowledge at hand. Those statements are equally true of economics and physics.
deleted by creator
Astronaut with a gun, floating behind comic “always has been”
The textbook intro examples of the law of supply and demand aren’t even true in practice.
They’re all like “prices on ice cream will rise when it’s hotter out so there is more demand for it!” and I have never found that to be true at fucking all.
That and I’ve never seen prices ever go down for any reason whatsoever unless it’s some already volatile thing like oil/gas.
Coke invented a vending machine that would automatically raise prices as the temp went up, but there was outcry after its announcement so it was never released
There’s a lot of tactical thinking and gamesmanship that goes into pricing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricing
As for economic theory, the value of economists, and the semantics of the word “law”… yeah…I’m not getting in to all that.
It’s pretty simple. You don’t care about a particular grain of rice unless it’s special in some way (maybe something is drawn on it). Prices are always dependent on what people believe about the object. The “law” just defines the general parameters.
Also, there are many “exceptions” to the theory of gravity and apples do not always fall. Is an apple on a table falling? What about if you lift it? Oh my God, it’s doing the opposite of falling! How is that possible?!?
Also, there are many “exceptions” to the theory of gravity and apples do not always fall. Is an apple on a table falling? What about if you lift it? Oh my God, it’s doing the opposite of falling! How is that possible?!?
The theory of gravity says that mass exerts gravitational force, whether that force is sufficient to cause motion depends on other forces being exerted on a given object. An apple sitting on a table is not an exception to the law of gravity, gravity is still happening, but the force of the table counter-balances it.
Yeah, that’s my point.
