I myself am an armchair economics. I am fairly well read on the subject over the year. I think to an extent the article has a point. However if the whole point of the post is true, then it's summary should of course also be taken into doubt. ;-)

The real trouble with economics is that even economists disagree. It really is impossible to say anything like consensus amongst economists is x. A recent EconTalk (an excellent podcast to learn more about economics) talks about just this issue. Why do economists disagree:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/01/roberts_and_han.htm...

Their conclusion is that it is so easy to go in and fine statistics to prove just about any point, so in the end it is the "religion" of the economist in the end that decides which statistics and studies he uses. The two major schools and yes there are many more of Economics Keynesian vs Austrian/Chicago (ok those are 2 schools, but closely related) are in such a fundamental disagreement about just about anything.

Which brings me to question the premise of your article. I think it's healthy that geeks have an interest in economics. In particular geeks involved in startups need to know and understand the dynamics going on. So their analysis might not match yours, but that doesn't matter. They have an understanding and interest that helps them understand the world around them. This is not necessarily bad, in particularly if they are open to learning.

Saying that geeks shouldn't think about economics, because it's too complex for them to understand completely is just plain silly and also extremely elitist. It is also to a certain extent hypocritical as your post intentional or not says "Your understanding of economics is not as good as mine, so just stop thinking you know anything".

My "religion" in economics is the Austrian school of economics. I definitely view the world and politics through these colored glasses. I gradually arrived there on a long journey starting off as a socialist.

My life as a programmer has definitely helped me reach the conclusion that the economy is so complex that no amount of experts could possibly understand it completely. That the only possible way of living (not controlling) in such a complex system is through a distributed network of autonomous agents. I am sure many other programmers have reached the same conclusions.

My belief in markets has been flavored recently by Nassim Taleb's Black Swan, who concludes that the reason free markets are superior is not because of some complex theory of efficient prices, but because free markets allow more people to experiment and therefore accidentally find the right answers. An expert driven planned economy allows only one person throwing the dice.

The next 3 paragraphs should be understood is my conclusion about elitists as seen through my "free market" goggles:

Then again there are many other programmers who follow another religion. Since childhood many programmers have always been the most intelligent person we know. If you grow up like this it is very easy to start seeing other people as stupid. This is essentially how elitism grows.

It is very hard to avoid being elitist, when you spend a lot of time analyzing every situation in your life and see the vast majority of the people out there not doing the same. This elitist way of thinking almost requires the intelligentsia to take control. People often credit this way of thinking to Plato, all though it is such a natural way of thinking I'm sure it goes way back.

The Keynesian approach is one of the less evil outcomes of this elitist way of thinking. "We need to stimulate the economy so the small simple people can build their economy up". The other extreme was Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat, where he concluded that it would take several generations of reeducation of the people by the elite, before society would be perfect. These two approaches while very different have the same fundamental reasoning that people are stupid and we the decision makers are not.

Both of these economic religions are very common among geeks. I also think it is natural that they are prevalent and that people discuss it. You see both of these (I know I'm overgeneralizing) battle it out on hacker news. I think this is actually healthy. I know that I can't convince a true believer of socialism that the free markets are the way to go. I can also safely say that it is highly unlikely that anyone will convince me in a single discussion that we should all become leninists.

That said, I have been corrected several times in discussions here on hacker news and have learnt from that. It is also an interesting and fun intellectual exercise for both of us. Who knows we might even convince someone sitting on the fence to jump off in our direction.

My conclusion is that Geeks and in particular geeks in startups should have an interest in economics. I also don't think we need to hold geeks to an even higher standard than actual card holding economics professors.