The semester is over! Finals seemed to go pretty well. I expect I'll have forgotten everything by day after tomorrow.
This completes my third year back in school, and I have three semesters to go before I complete my coursework. In truth it's all gone by pretty damn fast. Seems I was only cooking up this whole idea a few days ago.
I was warned when I started that grad school was an endurance test more than anything else. They were right. The experience comes complete with great projects and ridiculous ones. This last semester I had to take what they call a trans-disciplinary course called "The Nature of Inquiry." It was easily the worst course I've taken since being back in school, and possibly the worst ever. Not because it was difficult or poorly taught (it was neither), but because in order to get the point across to a class full of people from multiple disciplines, the material is dumbed down to the point of silliness. Frankly, if anyone in that course wasn't already aware of the course materials, they shouldn't be in grad school. (End of rant.)
So for the next few days I'm going to catch up around the house and take care of a few personal projects, then perhaps read a PG Wodehouse novel.
Wow, an entire year has gone by and I haven't had a single thought! Some might say it's been longer....
It's now the weekend before finals week, at the end of my first year at Claremont Graduate University. The Fall semester was great. I did a lot of good work and wrote two pretty good papers (which I've added to the articles section). Spring semester always seems to be a let down though. Had a bucket load of exams and not so many projects, which means that a lot of information went into short-term memory and got dumped. I wrote a few papers, but none of them of any great worth, IMO. (I'll post those to the articles section as well.)
I took four courses this semester (only had three in the Fall) and that was a mistake. I was burried in busy work all the time, and didn't really have time to think about any significant work. Exams tend to make you do that. This smester has given me a great affinity for the fictionalized words of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, “I cannot waste time memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals.” Although I'm not in Nash's league, I get the sentiment. A lot of the theories that I had to memorize this semester were weak indeed.
Next semester (Fall) looks to be a great improvement. I'll be participating in an agent-based modelling directed study course that should yield some good and meaningful work, and I'm looking forward to it.
On another note, I've also taken on a project with my old company One Small Step. The Advanced Millennium Wars project will be a massive simulation game that will incorporate conflict, economics, and politics. It'll come in distinct packages that focus on specific regions, and examine the history and politics of each. Hypothetical conflict projections will be based on existing conflict theoies such as Power Transitions. Each set will contain extensive documentation that makes the theoretical case for each hypothetical scenario. It's the project I've always dreamed of doing, and to be working on it with Joe Miranda and Mike Anderson is simply fantastic.
"Both Marxist and Capitalist theories have been proven wrong over the years, on many points...."
I read a lot of comments like that and it makes me wonder if anyone knows just what, specifically, has been proven wrong about either one? It seems so ubiquitous a comment, yet it's always presented absent any concrete examples.
First of all, there is no "capitalist" theory that some cabal of policy makers in some dark room someplace attempt to implement. Capitalism is simply the name we aply to an economy in which capital (i.e. assets) is assigned fungible value. There are several theories that try to describe how it works, which include Neo Classicism, Neo Keynesian, etc. The difference here is a dispute between the effectiveness of fiscal vs. monetary policy, and short and long term respectively.
But many will invoke the Lucas critique if you try to use a descriptive theory to implement policy.
The real difference between these theories and Marxism is in who sets the prices and to what degree. Marxism says that the economy is scientifically manageable, and therefore prices can be set by committee to regulate economic growth. True Marxists still adhere to that. The problem with the theory is in the fundamental assumption that the economy can be managed to that extent. It's like trying to apply principles of classical physics to quantum mechanics. It's a chaotic system in which you can never know enough detail in order to specify any given economic path effectively. That is the failure of Marxism.
The system used in the west, which we call capitalism, and which has several theories associated with it, more or less allows the market to set prices. In order to maximize public good, it is sometimes desirable to influence (not set) some price through the use of taxes, tariffs, tradable permits, etc. in order to manage externalities. A strictly Keynesian economist would advocate it to a greater degree than a classicist would, but they are both still capitalists.
Because Keynesian theories tend to focus on the short term and deal more with fiscal policy, it's not hard to see why politicians tend to be more amenable to that economic theory. But it's had its problems, witness stagflation under Carter.
While classicists are more concerned with monetary policy and the long term, the great depression is often attributed to early classical thought on the economy (not entirely fairly, but it has some merit). Neo classicists claim credit for fixing stagflation through Volker's monetary policy under Reagan. Greenspan is a neoclassicist as well, which seems obvious enough given that he's responsible for monetary policy.
Capitalism works under the right conditions, and works best where there is a dichotomy among theorists. But those conditions are the issue as to whether it works or doesn't work. And no, democracy isn't necessarily a prerequisite. However, a legal infrastructure that has a uniform system for recognizing the fungibility of assets is. For further reading on that, I'd recommend Hernando de Soto's Mystery of Capital.
My point here is to take care when stating that capitalism has been proven wrong. Nothing about it has been proven one way or the other. An economy is a chaotic thing that tends to work most efficiently (albeit not necessarily fairly) when left alone. Where externalities occur, it is necessary to influence it through policy. That policy can, does, and should include things such as labor laws, environmental laws, taxes, etc. But on the whole, where the proper infrastructure exists to support it, it works pretty well.
Why democracy is important to have in a capitalist system is accountability. While fiscal policy can influence the economy in a positive way in moderation and care, it can ruin one very quickly. This also has a lot to do with why economists advocate an independent central bank. To put both monetary and fiscal policy in the hands of government can be suicidal.