it’s insane to live in a world where something so important is a black box

Economics is the craziest “science” you ever saw. I did graduate work for a while in the Economics Department at Rutgers. It was at the height of their hubris. It was all about statistical modeling (“econometrics”). Time has proven that kind of modeling to be almost worthless (the higher the level and the more the duration the more worthless).

The economic/political/technological/institutional reality of the modern capitalist industrial state is way too complex to be modeled or forecasted.

Like:

What in the world does it mean that total debt in the system has snowballed over recent decades?

What are the implications, the consequences? Ten economists will give you ten different answers. But our fate could be in the balance.

Maybe. Nobody knows.

That’s insane.