Zen and the Art of /.*/

Great article over at Strike the Root about Austrian economics and those damned Keynesians: Hail the Austrians, by Mark Davis

He tells a great little story about being in a calculus class with a bunch of natural sciences students and a bunch of business school students. The business school students were complaining that the economics problems were never assigned.

One [of the natural sciences students] said, “Yea well the rest of us don’t want to waste our time jerking off.” This raised the emotional level of the conversation and the hair went up on the backs of several business students.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the ringleader responded indignantly.

“It means that economics is mathematical masturbation. If you’re going to make up the inputs and pull the relationships out of your ass, then you might as well just make up the answers.”

“What?”

“We can measure the temperature that water will boil and the speed of objects falling, because we can reproduce these experiments proving quantifiable results.”

“So?”

“In physics, we can test our facts. Economics is bullshit in, bullshit out. It’s a waste of time.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Now if only somebody could explain this to Krugman, Bernanke, Geithner, Obama, Pelosi, and the rest of our dear leaders and get them to stop jacking off and get out of the way…