The crisis exposed an epistemological contradiction festering inside orthodox economics

Evidence

My primary thesis here, and in the rest of this volume, is that the crisis has revealed a severe epistemological contradiction that festers at the heart of the modern economics profession; this has dovetailed with a new set of practices and institutions that have developed since 1980 to paper over the contradiction. It began when the economics profession tended to grow more neoliberal over the past few decades. We will take that proposition as given here, because we aim to explore one of its most important implications: namely, that it sets up a treacherous dynamic interplay between the economics profession and the general public, awkwardly brought closer to the surface by the crisis. In a word, neoliberal theory in the context of economic crisis creates problems for economists’ self-image as public intellectuals. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 619

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘epistemological contradiction’ and institutions papering it over connect to Mirowski’s broader argument in Machine Dreams and to the reader’s thread on how market-fundamentalist doctrine absorbed the crisis. — connects to: Orthodox crisis models still measure fluctuations against rational-expectations equilibrium. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 2208; Economic crises are also conceptual and intellectual catastrophes — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 45; Cognitive dissonance drives economists and neoliberals to treat crisis as reinforcing their beliefs (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Economists obscuring knowledge during crisis stems from contradicting logics of expertise and market faith #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 655
• The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas #expands (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 132
• Orthodox macroeconomics masked crisis buildup and blocked repairs afterward #exemplifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 662