Comment on Fred Zaman on ‘Why the ergodic theorem is not applicable in economics’
Blog-Reference
Neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy has a license for incompetence. Orthodoxy has been debunked beyond recovery for its formal and material inconsistencies and not because we don't like it for some reason. The first requirement of scientific work is that you can read and understand. Obviously, you cannot. You simply repeat your anti-mechanistic mantra.
“Your model of the economy appear to be no less mechanistic than any you would propose to replace — this perhaps is your Achilles heel.”
If you could read and understand, you would realize that my previous post clearly states: “The 7th equation finally describes human behavior in the most general form as target-oriented.” Target-oriented or intentional is clearly different from mechanistic.
Please note also that the axiomatic foundations of a theory are not a model (or modl as Leijonhufvud calls the economist's proto-scientific plaything). And finally, both Newton and Einstein applied the axiomatic-deductive method. For the first pages of Principia see here.
What all this tells you is that it is an absolute necessity in any field — not excepting economics — to state one's premises clearly. Waffling about the old mechanism/vitalism chestnut or psychology or sociology or physics simply won't do. This, of course, has always been the Achilles heel of traditional Heterodoxy and this is why the failure of economics as it lies open before all eyes must be attributed to both Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
