this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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It doesn't, though. Maybe it's assumed in models for simplification. Other sciences assume ideal conditions (eg, frictionless media, conservative forces, quasistatic processes in introductory physics) for simplification.
Behavioral economists have won Nobel prizes for studying departures from actor rationality. They're aware perfect rationality is a simplification.
They'd also refer to information asymmetry.
This post is specifically speaking to the cases where they use simplified models to inform policy. Not all economists are stupid and it is good that the field is improving on its weathered past. But the “science” which is taught to justify oppression, that’s still also real propaganda that is being pushed. See i.e. the Laffer curve.
That's a bit reductive, too. I recall economists arguing the Laffer curve is valid & the US is on the low tax-rate side of the optimal tax rate, and that was decades ago. They'll show the deadweight loss of taxes & also point out its regulatory uses to correct market failures.
It's also not a recent development. The field is broad and includes leftists & Marxists applying the same methods to study different problems.
When you get to the informing policy stage, much "harder" sciences like pharmacology also get the same treatment of using completely disproven crap to inform drug policy. If you look hard enough, you can almost always find a study that agrees with your wildest biases and a PhD (often even in "good standing") who stands behind it and agrees with you.
That there are 500 papers that find the exact opposite of your conclusion is not much of an issue when you're acting in bad faith and have a friendly media outlet to voice your views