Comment on Chris Dillow on ‘Does economics matter?’
Blog-References and Blog-Reference
Economics claims to be a science but is NOT. Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years.
From Adam Smith/Karl Marx onward, economists claim that their economic policy guidance has scientific foundations. This claim is untenable because economists lack the true theory: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum) Scientific truth is well-defined for 2300+ years by material and formal consistency. There is NO such thing as a materially/ formally consistent economic theory.
Economics is one of the most embarrassing scientific failures of all time.#1, #2 Economic policy guidance NEVER had sound scientific foundations. And it does not matter at all whether this guidance has been more rightist or more leftist, more capitalist or more communist.
The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational economic concept of profit wrong. With the pluralism of provably false theories, economics sits squarely at the proto-scientific level.
Because of this, the discussions of economists of different schools never had any scientific relevance. Economics has no truth value but only some political use-value. Politics itself, though, has at some point in history been swallowed up by the entertainment industry. And this is how economics ultimately became an integral part of the Circus Maximus with economists as political clowns.#3
For proof, one needs not go further than the Stumbling-and-Mumbling blog.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Throw them out! Orthodox and heterodox economists are unfit for science
#2 The real problem with the economics Nobel
#3 Economists: scientists or political clowns?
Related 'Macroeconomics ― dead since Keynes' and 'Delusions of useful idiots' and 'Economics: a science without scientists'.