Okay wait this brings up a point Dr. Richard D Wolff (americas leading Marxist economist) brought up in a lecture a while ago; economics needs an ethics review board.
Every other major discipline has an ethics review board. If you’re a doctor and prescribe a patient a lethal dose of the wrong medicine, you get disciplined. If you’re a biologist and commit animal cruelty, you get disciplined. If you’re a psychologist and conduct an unethical study, you get disciplined. If you’re an engineer and neglect safety standards when building a bridge, you get disciplined.
But if you’re an economist and your policies actively harm people in a demonstrable way, nothing happens. It’s all just a ‘matter of opinion’
American and other western economists advised the Russian government on how to run the country following the end of the ussr and its estimated that the economic policies they recommended directly lead to the deaths of millions of people. And not a single economist so much as even lost their job.
Economics degrees also need courses on ethics and the real human impact of economic policies so that economists can learn how to avoid harm in the first place.
