Steve Keen asked me if I had come across someone called Tim Worstall yesterday. The context was a blog post he was writing on neoliberal trolls, which is out this morning.
I mentioned I was familiar with Tim Worstall, although I had never met the man, and have no desire to do so.
I rather suspect he would like to meet me. It would seem that he has written well over 4,000 blog posts about me on his blog, all identified by the hashtag ‘Ragging Ritchie'.
I have no idea what can drive such an obsession. Is it admiration? Or a deep-seated fear that I might be right? Maybe it's dread that I could win the argument. What I do know is that this exceptionally strange behaviour has beengoing on for years.
Steve discusses what to call such sad obsessive who remain so dedicated to the economics that they learned during their future year undergraduate courses in his post today. He suggests that they be called a smug of economists, noting:
They are smug because they believe that mainstream, "Neoclassical" economics is an accurate model of the real world, and therefore anyone who criticises it must be wrong.
That will do for me. It's a suitable term for people so far removed from awareness of reality that they must be smug to presume they're right when the evidence screams to the contrary.
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Smug is about right.
I mean, many are well paid for their bullshit – let’s be honest.
I encounter this individual posting on various blogs. He appears to be trapped in his own head. His posts are unintelligible, except perhaps to those who attended in the same classroom, and were taught to transmit the English language through a scrambling device. I therefore find it difficult to impossible to judge whether his views have any application or merit. No doubt he would have me down as a mere bean counter.
Was he behind Murphy Richards, the twitter account which parody’s Richards work??
No idea. Does it still?
I’ve been trying to think of a collective term for economists like you, Steve Keen and Ann Pettifor.
Steve has used an adjective as a noun. So to do the same
I tried an ‘enlightenment’ of economists
a radical of economists
a progressive ditto
a innovation ditto
a challenge ditto
then I tried adding …’of enlightened economists, which works slightly better (excluding the first term)
so far I think Vanguard is the best I can do
I expect others can do better-if it is worth doing
Keep going….
I’d like a rising of enlightened economists
you asked
so a dynamic of enlightened economists
an insurgency of economists
A Reformation of economists
a regeneration of enlightened economists
the reconstruction economists
Renovation economists
an insurrection -like your rising of economists
with that I quit for a bottle of Doombar
🙂
A smug of economists all living in Dystoryopia!
and a re-vision of economists
or new-vision economists
I guess they like to look smug until they run out of road and vanity projects and realize tax payers are by no means and endless resource nor will trust be maintained in the system perpetuated by them.
Things will carry on as normal until they suddenly don’t.
watch out for a defuct currency while these very same people try to bring a new currency in with the same thinking that brought the old system down
Having searched for Tim Worstall and read some of his blog posts I would use much stronger words than would be allowed here! This follows on from part reading Steve’s ‘Debunking Economics’. Why part reading? It’s raising my blood pressure too much reading the rubbish that neoclassical economics seems to be based upon. I will finish the book eventually I hope!
Diogenes, who is reputed to have fled or been banished from Sinope for devaluing the currency, also said men (read economists) should be judged by their actions rather than their words (read assumptions).
He variously described men (economists) as, and I quote:
“a a kerfuffle of sparrows riffling through chaff”,
“a fluster of chooks contesting each peck”,
“a cacophony of crows dissecting a corpse”.
Sinope is in Turkey.
Final word:
My money is on Chicken Little.
Worstofall has been a mainstay of CrapX for years, the go-to source of neoliberal nonsense. Worth keeping an eye on to see what they are up to and their latest obsessions.
As an early Red Dwarf fan, I’m afraid I immediately thought of a smeg of economists…
Very good
Tim Worstall specialises in applying undergraduate-level – or to be charitable, perhaps masters-level – “Chicago school” hard-right neoclassical economic analysis across the board. What marks him out as particularly irksome is the extreme condescension and sneering tone with which he attempts to apply “Gotcha!”-type takedowns to anyone on the left, which more often than not simply exposes the limits of his understanding. Attempts to interact with the guy (of which I have made very few, and none in the last decade or so) simply reinforce his sneering and misanthopy, while drawing out the limitations of his knowledge. I know very few people on the left who bother with him these days. The fact that Steve Keen has been operating at the forefront of radical economics for at least 25 years without every hearing of Tim Worstall before, simply reinforces what a fringe figure Tim is.
Agree with all that