“Take an economics class,” and
variations such as “someone's never taken an economics class” or
“you people need to study economics,” is a phrase one sees often in any
political debate forum on the Internet. Usually it
appears in reply to a message that the poster feels (correctly or
not) betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of economics.
In
these cases it may also be accompanied by some short
oversimplification of some economic concept in the form of a
sentence
fragment. For example: “Supply and demand, jeez! Come back after
you take an economics class!”
Most use of “take an economics
class” is dismissive. It usually appears with little accompanying
argument. The poster is assuming that the truth of whatever that
their target has been arguing against is self-evident given knowledge
of economics. While use of the phrase is not an indicator one way or
the other as to the correctness of the poster's ideas, it does
indicate that the poster is unwilling or unable to coherently explain
why their target is wrong, either due to laziness, or due to not
actually understanding the subject matter themselves. But to
reinforce their superiority without actually defining it, they malign
the target's education.
Economics is the subject most often
found in “take a >blank< class,” but it can be anything.
People who fancy themselves (rightly or not) experts on a subject
just dismiss an opinion with which they disagree by suggesting a
reason for it (lack of education required to understand it) without
even giving any indication of what the supposed flaw in the opinion
was. This leaves those who (even if they are right, or at least not
blatantly wrong) are laymen who have not had this education in the
position of defending their opinion not knowing what is supposedly
wrong with it, and possibly acknowledging the lack of education on
the subject, which (again, whether they are right or wrong) gives the
“TAEC” the appearance of having won, because they are the knowing
insider, and the other poster is the unknowing outsider. All this
without ever having to have addressed the content of the opinion they
are opposing.
While
use of "take an economics class" may not be inherently unfair, as
in cases where it is directed as a repetetively and obstinantly
ignorant poster whose points have been dissected without
acknowledgment, in practice it is usually about equal parts appeal
to authority, red herring, and ad hominem.
The only effective counter to this is
to either be a bona fide expert in the subject who can accurately
take the “TAEC” poster to task for every single one of THEIR
errors; or to call the “TAEC” poster's bluff and explain the game
that is being played to anyone else. Note, this is not a good idea
if you know for a fact that you don't know what you're talking about
and were just taking a shot in the dark without acknowledging it as
such. And it likely won't work in a forum driven primarily by
emotion, or among those who are rigidly dogmatic where you are going
against the prevailing dogma.