Are we there yet?

Today, my exceedingly comely flist, as I was taking a brief mental excursion from the fabulous fuckery that is my life, I began to think about the science of economics and these, oh, I know you’re all poised on the knife’s edge of anticipation, are my thoughts –

I’ve always wondered why it’s classed as a science for one thing. For a system that seems so arbitrary, so balanced on the knife edge of panic and disorder and seeming reliance on the whims and fancies of a relative few individuals, it seems more akin to shamanism. It has no solid bedrock of surety, which is probably why I’m fidgety about it and also supremely - as this post will show -  unknowledgable about the whole kit and caboodle.  I’ve tried to read up on it, but honestly, if there is an interesting book on the subject I’m yet to discover it. It’s odd for a system that is so important to world order to be so fantastically dull. I know seeing all those traders, coked up and on their way to a stroke at 60, leaping about like teens in mosh pit, is mildly diverting, as is all the head holding despair which accompanies incipient economic collapse, but that’s just the lemon on a dispiritingly limp meringue You’d expect a “science” so arcane to have at least a hint of delicious thrill, but no.  It’s the dull train-spotting uncle who’s cornered you at the family get together and insists on regaling you with his trip to Budapest and its cornucopia of rolling stock and the only way to stop your brain imploding from the indescribable tedium is to gnaw your own foot off. Or maybe it’s just me…maybe there are folks out there fizzing with delight at some new theory or equation; positively orgasmic about fiscal policy and I’ve just not met them, or heard of them, or read about them. Economics has, after all, been famously called “The dismal science”. So as the world hurtles towards a deeply uncertain economic future, which could involve lots of unpleasant scenarios of burning and looting and really deep unpleasantness, I find myself miffed that it’s just not interesting enough. Come on, meteor strikes are interesting; global catastrophes…interesting; climate change, yep, interesting. Okay, these are all horrible, scary things but they are at least, and I’m sorry to be repetitive, really interesting.  If I’m going to have to live in a cave, swinging my cricket bat, beating back a crazed, starving horde who want to pilfer my last remaining box of cornflakes, I want the reason to be at least vaguely understandable.

I’ll leave you with a joke to lighten the dark days ahead.

Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with an economist?
A: An offer you can't understand.

I rest my case.

Yes I'm still still slogging away at this :D