One of the biggest problems with modern economics is that it began confusing mathematical elegance with scientific truth. To make economic models mathematically tractable, economists have to simplify the real world—often dramatically. That’s not necessarily ideological. It’s what you have to do if you want to solve the equations. But eventually the math became the master rather than the servant. Assumptions about perfectly rational people, equilibrium, efficient markets, and simplified human behavior persisted partly because adding more of the messy reality of how humans and economies actually work makes the equations much harder to solve. And there was another problem: the mathematics gave economics enormous prestige. It allowed economists to imagine their discipline as something resembling classical physics—a precise science governed by elegant mathematical laws. Admitting that economies are complex, evolving systems populated by social, emotional, cooperative, competitive, power-seeking human beings would mean giving up some of that certainty. Heaven forbid! Read more: evonomics.com/failed-economi… @David_S_Wilson @davidmcw @yanisvaroufakis @rorysutherland