[wta-politics] Libertarianism - I've been conned! Part 2

[Marc Geddes]

Here are some extracts from a book I recently read
which helped turn me away from Libertarianism for
good.  One of the world's most respected scientists
explained to me why much of economics is actually
little better than pseudo science.

Extracts fom 'Consilience' by Edward O.Wilson

Ch 9, 'The Social Sciences', Pgs 216-226

'...the theorists cannot answer definitively most of
the key macroscopic economic questions that concern
society, including the optimal amount of fiscal
regulation, future income distribution within and
between nations, optimal population growth and
distribution, long-term financial security of
individual citizens, the roles of soil, water,
biodiversity, and other exhaustible and diminishing
resources, and the strength of "externalities" such as
the deteriorating global environment.  The world
economy is a ship speeding through uncharted waters
strewn with dangerous shaols.  There is no general
agreement on how it works'

'...The models also fall short because they are
hermetic - that is, sealed off from the complexities
of human behaviour and the constraints imposed by the
environment.  As a result, economic theorists, despite
the undoubted genius of many, have enjoyed few
successes in predicting the economic future, and they
have suffered many embrassing failures...'

'...Expect in the most general and statistical terms,
economic models cannot forecast the onset of bull and
bear markets, or the decades-long cycles triggered by
war and technological innovation.  They cannot tell us
whether tax cuts or national deficit reduction is the
more effective in raising per capita income, or how
economic growth will affect income distribution.'

'Economic theory is impeded by a second, equally
fundamental difficulty...it lacks a solid foundation
of units and processes.  It has not acquired or even
attempted serious consilence with the natural
sciences...In economics and the remainder of the
social sciences as well, the translation from
individual to aggregate behaviour is the key analytic
problem.  Yet in these disciplines the exact nature
and sources of individual behaviour are rarely
considered.  Instead the knowledge used by the
modelers is that of folk psychology, based mostly on
common perception and unaided intuition..'

'Their models contain elegant graphical
representations and analytic solutions to theoretical
problems of equilibria.  Yet seen through the
established principles of the behavioral sciences,
they are simplistic and often misleading...Typically
the predictions arise from the commonsense intuitions
of the modeler, that is, from folk psychology...Seldom
are the premises of such models examined closely.'


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THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,  
  For, put them side by side,  
The one the other will include  
  With ease, and you beside. 

-Emily Dickinson

'The brain is wider than the sky'
http://www.bartleby.com/113/1126.html

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Mathematics, Mind and Matter
http://www.riemannai.org/

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