On Liberatarian Paternalism 2 - Response to Trisco

Here are my comments on Trisco's "On Libertarian Paternalism" , which were too long to fit in the comments box. It just meant to be casual musings in reply to Trisco's question about economists and is in no way meant to be a serious post.

Nice reaction, Trisco! Good point about the apparent contradiction. I'll like to know more as well.

My thoughts on economists being closer to politicians than scientists: Could economists be “scientists" (I had to put quotes, sorry), who are biased to the extreme? It’s no secret in academia that *most* scientists aren't really interested in the nature of reality...if the nature observed is not the nature they *set out* to observe. i.e., a result is probably not worth pursuing in full glory if it doesn't agree with what they wanted to observe. Perhaps you will agree that this is more significant in industry research, but I digress. What is interesting is what happens when the effect observed is the effect proposed. Then even scientists in the fundamental sciences are extremely prone to *advocate* and *advertise* the effect - "e.g., trapped photons must behave similar to trapped electrons, so let us look for the effect there". Well, economists are scientists with extremely real-world problems with real world implications, and unfortunately, with their only true laboratory being the real world. Therefore, I imagine the tendency to advocate and push their models on the real world (hoping their proposed effect would happen) is amplified much more than in scientists in fundamental sciences: a. that’s the only way they can test it, and b. their theory might just save the world. Note that most scientists, regardless of how what they propose in their grants, understand the evolutionary, as opposed to the revolutionary, nature of their research; perhaps this is not so true in economics, thereby moving them closer to politicians?

Disclaimer: This is a very general statement trying to explain overall trends in behavior among scientists in different fields. So it is served with a grain of salt, please take it as such.