The Fourth Big Lie: Economists understand us

Economics imitates science through a process of abstraction, which works quite well when you're dealing with quarks and bosons, but can't cope with living, breathing, self-aware human beings. Too many economists wave the banner of an illusory rigour and insist, when things go wrong, that there's something wrong with the world rather than with their way of understanding it. Like Mark Twain said, If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. As an occuptational psychologist once said, those who are attracted to economics may have unresolved childhood fears of the complexity of adult life. Systems thinking is a whole tool box. In essence, it's a perspective that helps us to ask useful questions, and welcomes the answers that come from anthropology, psychology, political science, and anywhere else including economics. It's holistic and flexible. It recognises that the world is a complex place. There is no uniquely correct way of understanding the world but systems thinking, at the very least, allowed the identification of flaws in the construction of the Eurozone, of Osborne's ExFiscCon policy, and Cameron's hollow concept, the Big Society. The market and the minimal state are not grounds for a new pragmatism. They're ideological moonshine, sanctified by an academic discipline that's away with the fairies; and there are alternatives, but they tend to contradict the interests of the 0.1%.