the seekers

In a manner of speaking, the legacy of renunciation of philosophy and methodology led much of the orthodox economics profession to behave in ways rather similar to the Seekers from 2008 onwards. The parallels between the Seekers and the contemporary economics profession are, of course, not exact. The Seekers were disappointed when their world didn’t come to an end; economists were convinced their Great Moderation and neoliberal triumph would last forever, and were disappointed when it did appear to come to an end. The stipulated turning point never arrived for the Seekers, while the unsuspected turning point got the drop on the economists. The Seekers garnered no external support for their doctrines, indeed, quitting their jobs and contracts prior to their Fated Day; the economists, on the other hand, persist in being richly rewarded by many constituencies for remaining stalwart in their beliefs. The public press was never friendly towards the Seekers; it only turned on the economists with the financial collapse. (There are already signs it may be reverting to its older slavish adoration, however.) But nonetheless, the shape of the reactions to cognitive dissonance was amazingly similar. The crisis, which at first blush might seem to have refuted most everything that the economic orthodoxy believed in, was in the fullness of time more often than not trumpeted from both the Left and the Right as reinforcing their adherence to neoclassical economic theory. Thus was made manifest the ‘spontaneous methodology of the economics profession’.