An investigation into egg prices(thebignewsletter.com) |
An investigation into egg prices(thebignewsletter.com) |
Understanding a problem requires a holistic view of the larger system. An egg producer may say prices are higher Because supply is lower due to culling. Part of that statement is true. The author then zooms out to better understand the larger system.
The truth of a matter deviates significantly from one party’s assertions.
it’s scary to me that people lack the skills, the desire or incentives to understand and objectively seek understanding of what’s happening around us especially in highly charged US political landscape. This isn’t like pure scientific pursuit of knowledge but a more practical day to day ability to question, understand and gather new information with the purpose of developing an objective understanding of the world.
It does, but the result is extremely uncomfortable. And the solving it will require actions that are even more uncomfortable.
You have to come to grips with the fact that there are monopolies at every single level. There is no inventory anywhere except bottom. There is no over capacity at any level.
Consequently, supply and demand simply do not work. There is no "excess supply" to use to make extra profit by eating the extra demand. There is no upstart supplier who can absorb the extra demand. The big suppliers can ratchet up prices with zero consequences. What are you gonna do about it?
> it’s scary to me that people lack the skills, the desire or incentives to understand and objectively seek understanding of what’s happening around us especially in highly charged US political landscape.
They don't lack the skills. They have chosen to treat politics like sportsball rather than something to actively think about.
I think one (uncomfortable) solution is this. Consumers should budget their expenses. So when the egg prices increase, they should consume less to maintain their budget for eggs, for example, a month.
This will mean that when the companies increases prices, more of their stock will remain unsold, increasing their expenses stocking them to go up. This could also cause disruptions on their supply chain. This should force them to reduce prices.
There are some other options:
Substitute blood - https://nordicfoodlab.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/2013-9-blood-... - I am not sure why people don't do this but maybe they are squeamish. Food grade blood is cheap and readily available from slaughterhouses and butchers.
Buy some chickens
There is no inventory anywhere except bottom? Fine. I'll go to the bottom.
> They have chosen to treat politics like sportsball rather than something to actively think about.
Not going to argue about that one...
Substitute tofu?
More like neo-religion.
If I was that bothered about eggs, I'd simply grow my own. Americans on average have way more space to mess around in than say most Europeans - the place is fucking huge. Chickens are very easy to "grow your own".
I'm not an American and clearly you have managed to get your collective knickers in a twist over a non issue, which almost certainly means that there is a bigger picture and a rather more important issue that really needs fixing.
Please stop fiddling whilst Rome burns.
you've just described scientific persuit.
Just because the object of said persuit pertains to everyday life, doesn't mean it isn't scientific. The goal of science is to understand truth, and discern it from falsehoods (which might appear true intuitively).
Science isn't about researching niche, or cutting edge things. It's about the method, rigor and ability to change one's mind based on evidence regardless of priors.
In my experience, people don’t care about systems, they care about outcomes. The world is driven by people who care about outcomes and held together by people who understand systems.
[1] https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...
Any small competition that eventually gets large enough will just be bought out by the next one up in the food chain (literally).
If the orange Cheeto was truly interested in combatting corruption, he would break apart this entire industry clear down to individual factories and processing plants, and implement laws to prevent anyone from ever buying out anyone else. Consolidation would be impossible, only organic growth would still be legal.
Or just put the entire industry under public control by nationalizing the industry. Without investors and CEOs to Hoover up those profits, prices could crater by 80% or more without affecting production or maintenance.
Game theoretically, these groups would still collude to maximise profits.
> this is the inevitable end-game of unfettered capitalism
I'm in awe, friend.
It's funny how some things (real estate) are supposed to keep going up in price, and it's a disaster that requires government intervention if they don't, while for other things (eggs) just the opposite is true. I suppose it depends on who benefits from each.
https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-...
Hopefully yall can make heads or tails of the data.
The querying tool is also linked at https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/#80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-8F1C-EC...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/national-chicken-council-asks-fda...
It also means this is not going to be a huge impact either:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/turkey-export-15...
That import is 240,000,000 eggs if my math is right. If it is spread over a few months we will barely notice it. If it were achieved in a single month, it might be more noticeable.
I am reasoning mostly based on significant figures. I did not compare historical lows to production figures to try to get an idea of what actual demand is and I assume there is a bit of a smoothing effect that allows a surplus and shortfall in adjacent months to cancel.
Added 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order curve fits to give an idea of the general trends in production.
what stops new entrants from reaping this price rise? Your monopoly would have to prevent new entrants from even starting. That would be where monopoly laws come into effect.
I love examples like this showing how this moral cultural movements are often just propaganda for nefarious purposes. People talk about recycling being pushed by the plastics industry but I’m sure there are more in the environmental side of things.
By that logic, we’d probably still be paying double-digit cents per minute for long distance calls. (Less than a dollar - a small price to pay to talk to your loved ones across the country!)
Tuna/sardines are a bargain by that measure.
Interestingly, in the early weeks of the Kamala Harris campaign last year, she actually advocated to fighting or stopping "price gouging", something that was wildly popular: 66% of respondents on a Harris Poll approved [1]. After bringing on her brother-in-law and the former Biden campaign staff however, she never mentioned it again because Wall Street didn't like it.
Now you will find all sorts of articles online from serious outlets about how price gouging won't work and they'll simply put a bullhorn in front of economists who say that but there is precedent, namely when Nixon put in a freeze on prices and wages [2].
Now one can agree or disagree with such a policy, whether it's a long term fix or not and so on but we can still say the following:
1. There is absolutely opportunistic price gouging going on, way more than the avian flu would otherwise warrant. This is true for so many things beyond eggs; and
2. Life is becoming unaffordable, especially with housing and food. Ordinary people feel this. Politicians who address those issues will resonate with voters; and
3. Gutting the executive branch, which is currently going on, will only make this worse as there will be even less enforcement of price-fixing than there currently is.
[1]: https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/america-this-week-wave-240/
[2]: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/22/nixons-famous-price-...
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
No one appears to be reporting the drop yet, which is fair since it is not clear the trend will continue as fundamentals have not changed beyond possible imports from Turkey.
That said, Safeway is an expensive store. Shop at Aldi. It is cheaper. Aldi is so much cheaper that you likely could have groceries delivered from it via Instacart and still save money.
I guess I should have known that it was a misdirect...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-hassett-face-the-nation-t...
And then there are other stores that saw this as an opportunity to raise egg prices to like $13 a dozen. Those eggs basically go unsold.
I think at this point the biggest factor in the egg supply crunch is that its so publicized and making people act poorly. As a result we see the effective number of available eggs crash as some of these are marked up and go unsold and some linger in someones fridge for a month before consumption. If everyone just bought their usual load of eggs maybe there wouldn’t even be a supply issue.
On the contrary - there's nothing more American than corporations abusing their oligopoly status for financial gain.
It was a really dumb thing to bring up and it chips away at the authors' credibility.
Edits: grammar
Naturally they could have it be a loss leader, but then I would expect them to be curtailing quantities. The shelves are fully stocked every time I'm there.
The other chains, all more expensive, have half or third stocked shelves and a dozen eggs is $7-8 and up.
The egg "shortage" is manufactured bullshit. There's only a handful of major egg producers and they're clearly in collusion.
Just like the shortages that supposedly lasted a while during the pandemic; CEOs were bragging on earnings that they had raised prices more than their costs went up, and they kept them high after costs dropped - they decided to keep them high because people would pay that.
Apparently they don't care that a lot of things folks in poverty / low income buy...aren't discretionary spending.
This is not getting solved for at least a decade, probably 50+ years before another regime change occurs.
I agree with the description in the linked document - defendants presented "substantial evidence that grocery stores and other customers demanded animal-welfare standards", companies like McDonald's, Walmart, and Kroger demanded or required the animal welfare standards, the program was developed with input from a "Scientific Advisory Committee" of experts in animal reproductive welfare, and there was pressure from animal-rights groups and consumers for better treatment of hens.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.26...
> For their part, Defendants argued at trial that the UEP Certified Program was a bona fide effort to satisfy customer demand. In Defendants’ view, the UEP Certified Program was a natural response to pressure from animal-welfare groups, buyers, and end consumers. According to Defendants, they felt pressure to make life better for hens.
> In that vein, Defendants presented substantial evidence that the grocery stores and other customers demanded animal-welfare standards. So did consumers. And so did animal-rights groups.
> For example, before adoption of the UEP Certified Program, Cal-Maine lost McDonald’s as a customer after McDonald’s demanded producers expand the size of cages for their hens. See Defs.’ Ex. 182. And within a few years of the creation of the UEP Certified Program, grocery chains like Walmart and Kroger would purchase eggs only from UEP Certified producers. See Defs.’ Exs. 329, 374, 639.
> According to Defendants, they were simply responding to market demand when they implemented the cage-space restrictions in the UEP Certified Program. The jury heard evidence that the UEP Certified Program was a legitimate animal-welfare program. Specifically, Defendants pointed out that the UEP created the standard after following the guidance of a Scientific Advisory Committee.
> That Committee consisted of an all-star team. See 11/1/23 Trial Tr., at 3085:25 (Dckt. No. 657) (Armstrong) (“I was very, very pleased. We put our dream team together.”). It was chaired by a leader in the field, Dr. Jeffrey Armstrong, who has degrees in physiology, and specializes in the reproductive physiology of farm animals. See 11/1/23 Trial Tr., at 3074:19-25 (Dckt. No. 657) (Armstrong). Reproductive physiology of farm animals is what it sounds like – how animal reproduction works. Id. at 3075:1-10.
> In sum, the jury learned about the UEP Certified program, and about its standards. And the jury heard dueling views about the purpose of the program.
> Again, Plaintiffs alleged that the UEP Certified Program was a backdoor way to restrict supply. Plaintiffs told the jury that the program required the birds to have more space. More space equals fewer hens in each cage. And fewer hens means fewer eggs.
But once they discovered that it’s a convenient excuse to raise their profit margins, they hopped onboard.
>from serious outlets about how price gouging won't work
I think you meant to say "price freezes", "anti-gouging regulation" or similar.
No, they didn't. They campaigned on a vague anti-"price gouging" promise while pretending they didn't even know who Lina Khan, Johnathan Kanter and Rohit Chopra were.
Harris never made it clear if any of their jobs were safe, her advisor and brother-in-law Tony West was Uber's general counsel, and Mark Cuban, a proxy for Harris during the campaign, screamed from the rooftops how much he hated them all and how they would be gone if Harris won (until the campaign told him to stop saying that.)
The only people mentioning antitrust during the campaign were on the Republican side, all the way up to Vance at least, and they continue to engage even after winning. Democrats were campaigning on companies "doing better" and not "taking advantage" and on anything else that wouldn't be definable or enforceable.
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edit: it's important to mention that this is the second avian flu outbreak since covid to kill an enormous (but not as enormous as it sounds) number of birds, the previous outbreak was used as an excuse to raise the prices just as high, and egg profits skyrocketed. This happened entirely during the Biden administration. I don't know how Harris would have differed, but we have already seen the Biden response and it was to let everyone get away with whatever.
It’s so absolutely wild what the litmus tests are for each party. Absolutely fucking wild.
A little pessimistic, no?
People thought the blue wave would never end after Obama was elected.
No way to tell what the future holds.
Seeing as how there are a lot less principled people involved, and the oligarchs enjoy the idea of personal techno-fiefdoms the odds are at least non-negligible that the USA as a democracy could end.
What is Trump doing? Promoting imports of cheaper eggs from abroad, if nothing else. He is the first politician this century to make a big deal out of balancing the budget and our imports/exports. This will not be a painless process but something has to be done.
H&W may have campaigned on this, but there's two things critical to good advertising: offering what people want, and offering it credibly.
Maybe interesting to you and others largely insulated from the downsides of "a different strategy". Others might not find it so "interesting" at all ...
I don't substituting blood for eggs is a widely-known option. I'd never heard of it before now, and I have a somewhat above-average amateur interest in cooking and food science.
So $4.27 per lb.
Canned chicken can be cheaper.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Sardines-in-Water-3-7...
Traditionally in the US, monopolies are managed by either forcing breakup/divestiture (the the company is already a monopoly) or regulating the maximum market share consolidation (preventing mergers which consolidate beyond that threshold).
And tech is different from agriculture. Governments will go overboard to prevent famine or hyperinflation of food prices because both with cause massive political and social instability. Tech doesn’t (currently) plan an equivalent role in our lives, so people could tolerate monopolistic behavior in tech longer than in core agriculture.
Being pro-markets and pro-capitalism is not the same thing as being in favor of letting companies run rampant with M&A with no consideration for market power or monopolization.
And those people who scalped toilet paper and sanitizer....their motivations may be scammy, but they were correcting a market that wasn't correcting itself.
Yeah it would suck for sanitizer to cost 10x as much, but that's the only thing that's going to make people ration it like they should.
Indeed the power and effective of agencies is being dramatically reduced. I believe this is the point that was trying to be made.
However, rulings like Trump v. United States vastly expand the power of the executive branch. Even if you're one of those people who believes in Unitary Executive Theory, prior to Trump v. United States, those powers were hypothetical. Hence the need for a ruling. It's to be seen whether a Unitary Executive would be more effective.
I don’t think most republicans like trump, he just has a cult following.
I also don’t think that any other republican can garner that kind of following. Trump has aura in a way that no other public figure has right now.
I don’t think any regime he sets up would survive his death.
Further - It's REALLY hard to keep a cartel stable (much less secret) if there are more than single-digit members. Hell - OPEC is a great example. It's only 12 country members, and they can barely hold the thing together. Angola just left last year over disagreements...
So breaking up the monopoly and continuing to apply existing cartel laws would be a perfectly fine approach to tackling this problem. It's really disingenuous to imply we can't fix this. We can and have. It's like people don't remember "Robber baron" history at all...
It’s not exactly greenwashing but it is used as a political tool nevertheless.
I do the same for EVERYTHING. my wife and I make a decent living but we drew lines when the prices started going up. we can afford it, not just eggs but also other things that have been price gouged in the last couple of years. issue is of course there are not enough of us to make a difference
But I heard our flock numbers in that period were 10 times that. So I'm not sure what to think.
I do know it was easy to get chicks this year, so that confused me even more.
Perhaps the lack of grocery eggs was because they were incubated instead?
I don't know.
Grocery eggs aren't even fertilized.
Explain what these words in the sequence they were presented mean.
Are you sure you're right, at all?
> They presided over some of the highest inflation in American history.
Their statement is completely accurate.
I can’t see how that wouldn’t lead to debasement and ultimately the collapse of the US hegemony. At least this way we will have TSMC and other local production capacity.
The status quo would be, for example:
* continuing to honor the social safety net constructed incrementally since 1929
* honoring contracts with overseas organizations
* honoring the 200+ year old understanding that Congress controls spending, creates government departments, and establishes rules for the hiring and firing of government employees
* retaining an understanding of the complex and deeply woven role of the federal government, along with the argument known as "Chestertons fence" (don't tear down a fence till you understand why it was built)
* continuing to structure taxation based on (a) the marginal value of income (b) the concept that the impact of taxation should be roughly equal no matter what your income level is
* resist the expansion of worldwide ideologies that lead to a decrease in personal liberty and/or is accompanied by the use of military force to acquire another nation's territory (we've never been close to perfect on this, but it's nice to have an ideal in mind rather than just dropping any attempt at a morally just world).
Debt is only a problem if you subscribe to heterodox ideas about how national economies with sovereign currencies operate (or worse, imagine that national economies function like household or business economies).
The critical part to remember is that people dont have to do the math and do the budgetary calculus. If they cant afford the eggs, they cant buy them.
And in terms of protein, a dozen eggs is pretty close to the same amount of protein as 14oz of firm tofu... so my cost for tofu protein is like a quarter of my cost for egg protein. (Organic in either case, fwiw.)
They last a long time, are cheap as shit, and extremely healthy with the lowest dollar per gram of protein and couple it with a bunch of fiber and whole host of beneficial micronutrients.
And for obvious reasons, bird flu infecting mammals is likely to be a greater risk to humans than that present in birds.
> It's a cheap food sold as a gourmet item because it's rare.
> Like a lot of _other_ fermented foods.
Almost all dairy in any normal supermarket has been pasteurized. I would say "all" but I'm sure there is at least a single exception somewhere even if I can't find it.
Raw milk products at your "natural" farmer's market on the other hand ...
(We're not talking about cottage cheese from raw cow's milk).
Cottage cheese is a fine idea, hysteria about bird flu is overdone, cottage cheese is healthier than processed meat, in the US. Remember Chipotle's multiple meat handling scandals that sickened 1100? You can't point to similar for cottage cheese.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+I++make+tofu+from+scr...
As for "other fermented foods" your final sentence admits it works as used in my post.
MMT does not.
We don't know who is correct. We do know that one POV is massively favored by those who would like to use the national debt as a reason to impose austerity policies on the US economy.
Experimenting with a different approach might be understandable if the austerity wasn't aimed directly at killing the global goodwill that makes such monetary inflation possible - USD's status as the world reserve currency. As it stands, I don't know things would look any different if our country was being controlled by a hostile foreign power intent on destroying us.
On the one hand we have a simple model that 1+1=2. On the other we have someone else proclaimed correct saying it’s not so. But it’s too complex for me to understand.
I'm not here to solve your problems.
The fact that you think that all economies can be reduced to something as simple as "1 + 1 = 2" is one of your problems. Good luck.
No need for "debasement", but sure.
> all the while ignoring the hollowing out
No, we should not be doing this. But the left has been talking about this for decades and was mocked for it. The idea that billionaires and the recipients of their largesse are how we stop "ignoring the hollowing out" just seems laughable to me.
> allowing a large portion of the population to become redundant, unproductive, and irrelevant in the world economy
when the left raised these objections to global trade treaties that ignored labo mobility, they were roundly ignored and ridiculed. Again, the idea that the very class of people who wanted these changes (free movement of capital, tax-free repatriation of profit, tariff-free importation of foreign produced goods, massively reduced labor costs) are the people who will oversee the reversal of their effects just seems laughable to me.
These are absolutely things we should focused on, and it is true that the left-as-represented-by-the-Democratic party has not really done so (certainly not until Biden, and even then it was relatively weak sauce). But the idea that this administration is actually motivated by a desire to solve these problems and not simply reduce costs and taxes for the capital class ... again, it just seems laughable to me.
> These are absolutely things we should focused on, and it is true that the left-as-represented-by-the-Democratic party has not really done so (certainly not until Biden, and even then it was relatively weak sauce).
So, you're right - up until this "regime change" not a lot has been done. And at least this is moving in approximately the right direction. Even if this is a rough amputation, at the very least it's likely to remove the tumor, when nothing up till now has done so.
To take just a single example: tariffs. It is true that if one were interested in re-growing a domestic manufacturing base, tariffs might be one tool you might use to help promote that (they also might not be). So now we have an administration that has actually gone with tariffs, but in such a ridiculous fashion that it is more or less certain that they will have no such impact on the US economy. Tariffs on! Tariffs off! Tariffs on! Tariffs off for my friends! etc. etc. In fact, the most charitable interpretation of the current tariff strategy is as a back door for more ass-kissing by companies and economic sectors.
The same applies to everything else they've done so far. This will not remove the tumor, though it may amputate enough limbs that the tumor is the least of our worries.
Source: just got done cutting some pine trees on a hill behind my house because we got a notice. They will absolutely throw a fit, if we kept chickens
The problem is that people don't see anything wrong or shameful about being the person who was bitching about the noises roosters make in 2017 and then also being the person bitching about inflexible supply chains and egg prices in 2025.
If it wasn't eggs it'd be some other thing.
https://www.omlet.us/guide/chickens/laws_about_keeping_chick...
https://www.quora.com/Are-backyard-chickens-legal-in-Califor...
(Palo Alto: Up to six hens. Mountain View: Up to four hens. Los Altos: One hen per 1000 sq feet, no permit required. Sunnyvale: Zoning laws apply. Santa Clara: zoning restrictions apply. San Jose: Up to six without a permit, up to 20 with a permit. San Mateo: Up to 10 birds, depending on plot size, with a minimum plot requirement of 2500 sq feet (excludes most people). No permit required. San Francisco: Up to four, roosters allowed, no permit required. Oakland: No number restrictions, no permit required. Berkeley: No number restrictions, no permit required, roosters allowed. Anarchy!)
What we need roundabout now is a webcam campaign/tutorial on legal backyard chicken raising...
$33 for 6 birds, last month. They're not fully feathered yet.
https://www.legislation.act.gov.au/View/di/2010-89/current/h...
For example: a lot of people see massive beurocracy as a bad thing. Cutting it back, even in very rough fashion, even with potentially selfish motives, is seen as a good thing.
In your example re: tariffs. What's interesting is that tariffs are fundamentally a social exercise. You can use them with a light touch, to encourage/discourage specific industries in fine detail, or you can use them as a club to force concessions from other countries. Using it as a club requires an aggressive approach that many people don't even understand and have never themselves experienced. When you don't know how it works, it just looks dumb.
There's a lot that probably is clumsy here, but I think that making absolute statements is showing your hand a bit.
https://www.delish.com/food-news/a63842548/what-are-fertile-...
You will find a number of people who have claimed to have hatched a number of types of birds from store eggs, including chickens.
New layers are bred away from the main flocks in relatively tiny volumes, under 1% of layers' eggs. Culls may drive a need for more layers to be raised, increasing that percentage but the cycle rate for these hens in intensive farms is pretty regular already (<18 months) so I doubt they'd invest in the additional hatchery facilities for a temporary population lull.
this actually speaks to my point more than the other replies you (and other) gave. A temporary shed for layers to nest isn't insurmountable. Especially if you know that the end result is more money for you because of supply issues.
What i am not sure about, is why that didn't happen, since you say it did not. anyhow, it was just an idle thought. If i was selling eggs, and suddenly a quarter of my flock was wiped out - by a fox or something - i would probably immediately borrow a rooster and let the layers nest. I've done it before, so i'm not just "guessing." Contemplating protecting nesting chickens is the only thing that gives me pause, as i don't really like "outside dogs", but i have a herding dog.
> San Francisco: Up to four, roosters allowed, no permit required
I should have said above the $$$ reason predators are a huge problem in urban/suburban areas is you can't legally shoot them/ use BB guns, and it's near-impossible to use poison (if you have pets or small kids, or your neighbors' pets pass through). So if you regularly have to spend $500++ on a professional exterminator for a single fox or raccoon, there goes your entire $ viability. It's not at all like a farm in a rural county. HN business idea: is there any multiple infrared camera security setup that can behaviorally distinguish between predators vs your own pet, in the middle of the night? without needing to AirTag your pets?
Chicks are processed at enormous speed and volume. Males are killed and the females are boxed up and sent to farms. This is factory level work and involves expensive automation. The size of flocks makes doing this without automation unfeasibly slow.
So egg farmers who lose a flock just buy another. They might have to wait for their scheduled order to come in. They don't spend $20m on a temporary hatchery facility.
You could start by stating your assumptions and basic axioms. Rather than asserting your conclusions and name calling things heterodox.
> You could start by stating your assumptions and basic axioms.
I'm not here to write a text book on economics. I'm here to point out that "debt is bad, we can never carry on like this" is a belief, not a statement of fact.
Everything in macroeconomics is a belief, because it is clearly far from a hard science.
Common sense always applies to some degree when it is based on logic. Also my belief is that a system where there is no limits on government spending and debt seems obviously unstable and likely to become infinitely corrupt.
And yes, economics is far from a hard science and most macro is driven by some combination of personal experience and political ideology. But that doesn't mean that "non-common-sense" ideas about macro are wrong, anymore than it means that extrapolating from the "common sense" of personal experience (i.e. no limits on your own spending and debt will lead to bankruptcy) is right.
But no I don't agree with your claim. Common sense is an excellent guide and a major reason why evolution gave us large brains. And that includes the hard sciences, only failing in very specialized niches that often took centuries to find after almost everything else was well-explained by intuitive theories. Biology is not a hard science.
Morever, equating logic and common sense is to deny the recency of "logic". Humans reasoning like this, even if you want to take it back to the Sumerians, is a very recent development in human experience (probably).
> Biology is not a hard science.
OK. I wonder what all that lab time and experimentation was for that I saw when I was doing my PhD in computational molecular biology (never finished). I guess it was all just ... soft.
> centuries to find after almost everything else was well-explained by intuitive theories
Darwin would like a word. As would Mendel.
Realms where our senses do not operate would be microscopic or relativistic and the like where which we have never been able to observe before. National economies are completely observable and accessible to our logic and common sense. They are akin to thermodynamics which is not counterintuitive at all.
You are arguing by example and I am countering with larger classes of examples. For someone who gives up so quick on picking winners in macroeconomics theories you sure are sure of your answer here despite any quantitative basis for your claims.
You can only say this thanks to the work of generations of previous scientists (and teachers) who managed to render the very unintuitive as intuitive.
> Realms where our senses do not operate would be microscopic or relativistic and the like
There are (a) dozens of known cognitive biases, the majority of which we cannot avoid even when we know about them (b) visual and auditory illusions. Both of these are not in the microscopic or relativistic realms, but nevertheless show clear examples of our senses (and upstream sensory processing) failing to properly inform us about the state of the world.
> National economies are completely observable and accessible to our logic and common sense.
A national economy is only "completely observable" when reduced to statistics. No individual can possibly "observe" all of a national economy, partly because it is too big and partly because parts of it are too small. A statistical summary is not without value, but is not equivalent to it being "completely observable". As for the notion that we can bring our "logic and common sense" to bear on a national economy: well, that's precisely what the arguments between orthodox and heterodox economists is all about. They are bringing their logic and common sense to bear on it, and they do not arrive at the same conclusions.
> gives up so quick on picking winners in macroeconomics theories
On the contrary, I am very much for picking winners. While the answer may not be forever (subject to new theories), I pick MMT for a winner over orthodox/mainstream theories. This is not because I am certain that MMT is correct, but more because orthodox/mainstream theories have all the hallmarks of having been invented by the winners in an economy, for the winners.
Thermodynamics is easy. I did it as a sophomore. It can be derives using statistical mechanics from classical mechanics but this is not necessary. The ideas of heat itself and its flow are ancient.
Speaking of cognitive biases, pointing out examples of errors does not provide a proof that something is worse than some unnamed alternative. Unless your argument is that we are worse at something that an omniscient and perfect version of humans. And if you go all the way back to my very first statement, I said common sense always works to some degree. I didn't say the predictions would be perfect. You are making the much-harder-to-defend argument that it disappears from value via some magical statistics effect you haven't identified.