Economists live in tribes. Noah Smith has a recent post EconoTrolls: An Illustrated Bestiary which pokes fun at the various economic tribes. Noah also pokes fun at himself (he’s a mad scientist), although he stops short of lampooning his economic heroes. Perhaps he sees his heroes as Very Serious People who have no sense of humour. Still, that is a minor quibble. The key points are that Noah’s post is funny and that, importantly, modern economics is split into many incompatible tribes with minimal cross-tribal collaboration.
An economist
As a non-economist studying the behaviour of economists, this is an important insight. The various tribes approach economics in different ways. They have different starting points; use different methods; make different assumptions; quote different ‘facts’; cite theories of different dead economists; and tell different stories. Some tribes agree on their descriptions of how the economy works but differ on how the economy should be managed. Some tribes agree on how the economy should be managed but differ on their descriptions of how it works. Most tribes seem to disagree with other tribes as a matter of principle.
This tribalism presents little problem for economists. Each economist lives in one of the tribes and assumes that all of the other tribes are crazy. For a sceptical non-economist, however, this presents a major obstacle to any coherent understanding of economics. Which tribe, if any, should a sceptical non-economist join? What criteria should a sceptical non-economist use to make this decision?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and the most obvious answer seems to be to re-invent economics from scratch; compare that knowledge with each of the original tribes; and then decide which original tribe to join. I can see only two problems with this plan. The first is that I don’t have the time, inclination, skill or insight to re-invent economics from scratch. A minor obstacle! The second is that if I went to the trouble of re-inventing economics, I would, in effect, be inventing yet another tribe and making the multi-tribe problem even more difficult for future non-economists.
I was reminded of this problem this week while watching QI (and here). The programme showed a tribe of fire ants crossing a pond. The ants form their own bodies into a raft, and then use the raft to cross the pond. At each stage, some ants appear to form the raft while other ants move across the top of the raft. Eventually, the raft reaches the other side of the pond and the ants disembark onto dry land.
A raft of fire ants
This is an amazing natural phenomenon. There are a number of questions one might ask about this phenomenon.
- How (and why) do the ants decide to cross the pond?
- How do the ants know that they should form a raft and how do they steer the raft?
- How does each ant know when to move and when to stay in position?
- Why does the raft not sink?
- What would happen if some ants rebelled in the middle of the pond and decided they wanted to change direction?
- What would happen if all of the ants decided to move in tandem when they caught sight of their destination? Would this result in a tsunami-like phenomenon?
- Do some ants position themselves on the raft so that they will be at the front of the raft when they reach their destination?
What does this have to do with the tribes of economists?
Compare the study of the behaviour of ants collaborating to move across a pond, and the study of the behaviour of humans collaborating to improve their individual and collective well-being. In one case, scientists observe the behaviour from a detached perspective and use the scientific method to focus on the observable behaviour of the tribe rather than the imagined motivation of an individual. In the other case, economists observe the behaviour from alongside the tribe and see themselves as part of the tribe. Mainstream economists decide that it is vital to focus on the behaviour of an individual “representative agent” to determine the apparent motivation of individuals in the tribe and then, somehow, to link the behaviour of an individual to that of the tribe.
It strikes me that economists are making economics far too difficult and are causing many of the major tribal divergences of opinion through this approach. A much easier, and more scientific, way to study economics would be to hire a set of aliens to carry out the study on our behalf and then tell us of their findings. They would study us with a scientific approach similar to our approach to the study of tribes of ants.
What would these aliens conclude?
Firstly, they would see that ant-people are divided into many tribes. They would see that individual ant-people combine into teams of various sizes to collaborate with each other using a process of exchange to the apparent benefit of each individual and team. They would also see that ant-people tribes collaborate with each other through a process of exchange to the benefit of each tribe.
Secondly, they would see that some individuals, teams and tribes are much more productive than others. They would see that the process of exchange works best in a stable environment but that, for all tribes, there are some periods when the environment becomes unstable. They would see that the periods of instability often arise when the ant-people display herd-like behaviour similar to that of stampeding alien-cattle.
Finally, they would observe several mini-tribes of ant-people who stand at the edge of each main tribe and shout instructions to the main tribe to tell them how to collaborate more effectively. Unfortunately, each of the mini-tribes shouts incompatible advice, so the main tribes ignore them and behave mostly as though the mini-tribes don’t exist. The aliens would give the mini-tribes a name. They would call them ant-economists.
Afterwards, the aliens would retire to watch alien television. They would watch alien-QI and marvel at videos of the normally miraculous achievements of the ant-people; they would show concern when the ant-people appeared to stampede towards (or away from) what they imagine to be an economic cliff; and they would laugh at the behaviour of the ant-economists. They might ask themselves why the ant-economists thought they could advise the main tribes on how to collaborate more effectively when the ant-economists themselves showed little or no ability to collaborate effectively with other ant-economists in different mini-tribes. They would probably conclude that some questions are too difficult to answer and that they should concentrate their pursuit of knowledge on readily observable phenomena.
It is likely that my plan to use aliens to help us understand economics has more chance of success than trying to decipher the incompatible thoughts of the various economic tribes in Noah Smith’s post. However, in the absence of friendly and willing aliens, there is no practical alternative to the latter approach. I will start my journey to the metaphorical planet of Economania in an upcoming post.
A non-economist ponders a journey to the metaphorical planet of Economania
An economist reassures the non-economist that he will come to no harm on his journey
