ECONOMISTS WANGLED THEIR WAY TO POWER AND PRESTIGE BY BUILDING CASTLES AROUND MATHEMATICS.

dollar. “In April, 2014, a survey of 67 economists yielded a 100 per cent consensus: interest rates would rise over the next six months. Instead, they fell. A lot.”

By now almost everybody knows forecasts manufactured by economists wielding computer models and mathematics are not dependable. The consensus of economists in 2006 failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis. The record of economic forecasting is a real world history of “mathematical models masquerading as science and a public eager to buy them, mistaking elegant equations for empirical accuracy.” Levinovitz cites World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer’s complaints about the growth of “mathiness” in economics. fear mongering.

Jonathan Taplin, author of a new book called Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, plays to such fears. He portrays the three tech firms as giant monopolists that will inevitably move in on the whole economy — unless they are stopped.

The evidence is thin, and the theory thinner. Taplin, in a recent article, cites Amazon’s control of 65 per cent of the online book market. But online sales are only part of the book business. Recent data are sketchy, but as of 2015 Amazon had less than 20 per cent of the overall book market. It may have grown since, but it is not controlling