Economics is the discipline of cargo cults. It is a deeply inexact art that is basically applied sociology and politics with a dash of maths, complicated by the fact that (1) people may make or break trillions of dollars depending on its conclusions (there aren't trillions at stake on whether or not the Higgs boson exists), and (2) it studies an immensely complex system of 8,000,000,000 humans (+ historical baggage) which is not accurately observable and whose behaviour changes with the very predictions you make!
It is a discipline where even the basic axioms are subject to disagreement and 100s of different viewpoints, yet many economists insist that it is a perfectly exact science.
It is in fact a very political discipline and we would all benefit if we realised once and for all that there is no Single Truth, that the "consensus" is not necessarily correct, and that There May Be An Alternative.
It is a discipline where even the basic axioms are subject to disagreement and 100s of different viewpoints, yet many economists insist that it is a perfectly exact science. It is in fact a very political discipline and we would all benefit if we realised once and for all that there is no Single Truth, that the "consensus" is not necessarily correct, and that There May Be An Alternative.