Bryan Caplan Alex Epstein

I want to see a big debate over what does economics actually say about economics and economics itself. I want to see real science backed up by hard research that tests basic ideas about how the world works. In other words I want to see more research to explore and test deep questions about what happens in society and how we learn, what’s good for us and what are people most likely to do, what gets in the way of our freedom and so forth.

Because as much as economics studies economic forces and economics studies the economy, so it is possible to look at the world other than that of “economics, that is, economics in the broadest sense, and then just simply analyze the methods and ideas behind what the economists do.”

There are a lot of opinions about what economics does and how it did. The bulk of the time is spent talking about free-market, value-added and information theories of capitalism. That much we can agree on for sure. However, many economists just are content to leave the question of what economics does to this vexing question in the very abstract. Most economic facts, facts that are hard to look at or test and give an oversimplified understanding of, are related and indirectly controlled by a dozen laws which do little to advance our understanding of human nature and do a lot to hinder it.

Most economists won’t want to say: “Well if we look like hard-headed empirical economists, then maybe ‘uncertainty’ will give us a better insight into the economy and some things will get better,’ (You know what, not true. There is much that goes on in a human system, things which are things you can’t prove). But this position is too abstract to rely on, so we stick with what we can, which is only to look at what has worked for relatively long periods of time in order to try to find principles that may apply at a more abstract level.

“So, I ask now: How did this stuff from the start work? How did we get here from these abstract assumptions? I mean, is it mostly randomness and what we now call ‘chance’?