My mind keeps thinking back to a brief exchange I had with my mother about a year ago. It was sometime in the late fall/early winter of 2020 and my mom was watching some local news channel that was showing a segment on the state of pre trial detention in the U.S., and my mom turned to me and said something along the lines of "That's terrible! Did you know that some people are spending over a year in jails just waiting for their trial?"
(I don't remember the exact words said in this exchange but I remember the jist of it)
"Mom, you know I spent the entire summer yelling at cops. What makes you think that I didn't know about the terrible things they do?"
"Well, this doesn't have to do with cops because this is just the justice system not taking care of these people's cases fast enough"
Now normally I try and educate my mother about the bullshit in the world but that answer was so blatantly intentionally ignorant that I was just fucking speechless. It took me a couple seconds of complete bewilderment before I could ask the very, very obvious follow up question of "WHO DO YOU THINK PUTS PEOPLE IN JAIL???"
At that point my mom just threw up her hands and just gave up. I'm pretty sure she even realized that what she said was completely absurd. But I keep going back to this exchange in my head because it's such an eye opening view into the liberal mind
Anyone else have any good stories like that?
I think there is a sense among a lot of engineers that conventional economics are as rigorously researched and tested as for example physics. This oddly only applies to economics though, social sciences are seen as hogwash.
Being on the successful side of the current economic order is probably why. If the current order is benefiting you it surely has to be just.
That's true for many physicists too. They get caught up in the model, but can't actually envision an accurate portrait of real society.