Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
This is not a scientific debate, we don't have the time and resources for a prediction and waiting for it to happen.
The topic is "how to fix the economy." Surely we should entertain the notion that the OP is nonsense. How do you fix something you no one knows how to fix?

For all else, read a peer-reviewed economic science journal.
As opposed to a peer-reviewed ufology or astrology journal? Peer review is but one tool for gatekeeping a body of knowledge, and not nearly the most important one.

There are thousands of relatively simple economic rules that easily meet highest empirical standards, especially under experimental or ceteris paribus conditions.
Then it should be simple to name one genuinely economic "rule" that holds under scrutiny, as opposed to listing off some rather simple observations as you do below.

Some of them have even the robustness of natural laws, such as the observation that deficits are not sustainable or the inevitability of market failures under certain conditions.
Neither one of those qualifies as testable statements. Both assert a point of divergence in the unbounded future, rendering it impossible to present evidence to the contrary gathered from past to present. The second suffers in that it doesn't even specify causation. Surely an asteroid strike would cause a market failure; is astronomy now the province of economics?

There's for example not a single known commercial unemployment insurance in the world (due to two especially severe market failures, excluding con artist endeavours).
Setting aside what is or isn't a con, surely you jest.

Finally, there are even hundreds of management rules that can be proved (and were proved) with math just like math rules themselves, for example rules for optimising production under known conditions.
Math is the formal expression of an idea. The difference between math expressing physical nonsense and physical reality are laws constraining its application. Without laws of thermodynamics, energy conditions for general relativity, or quantum inequalities, physics devolves into free for all. These laws actually produce testable results that coincide with measured reality. To date, the social sciences have produced no analogous constraints--either generally or conditionally.

Economic science is a science, it's understood and defined as such. Those who doubt it can feel free to prove it...
It's not the burden of the skeptic to "prove" economics is scientific anymore than it is the burden of any reasonable man to admit astrology absent evidence.

They can't argue that economic science is no science without ignoring the real-world business of ten thousands of economic researchers.
There are billions of men and women who work day in and day out on unscientific pursuits.

This stupid questioning whether economic science is a true science always leaves an impression about the questioner on me that's probably beyond the forum etiquette. Those people simply do not grasp social sciences, and certainly don't seem to attempt it.
Attempt what? Solving ordinary differential equations? Regression? Reducing sparse matrices? Crunching expected value and variance? These tools are used far more frequently and effectively outside of the social sciences than within. Hell, they're usually built, extended and maintained by people from the hard side of the tracks.

What I find disappointing is that economists invest so much time learning the unholy mess of gadgetry they've accumulated that little is spent determining whether or not their toolkit applies to the problems they're trying to solve. Their first hint should've been the century and a half wasted formalizing any intuition they could lay their hands on while producing not one verifiable result. Their second should've been after even the fire marshal industry started to clean up its act.

Sure, some (or many) economists are no scientists at all, many have forgotten what they were taught about scientific work. There are lots of loudmouths who proclaim a lot of economic nonsense. Clueless people can see those loudmouths and make the mistake t believe that they were representative. Fact is, even natural sciences have such loudmouth (see cold fusion).
If your point is that scientists make mistakes, then you're understating it considerably. We can't even compare the body of rejected hypotheses to those that bear fruit. The point is that science provides the tools for rejecting those hypotheses in the first place and coming to agreement on those that work.

This whole strain of the discussion is moot, and off-topic, of course. Even if economist s were not working scientifically, they would still be the best experts around for explaining "How to fix the economy".
Economics-bashing is thus futile.
I have to disagree, and I'll do so redirecting you to the question I presented at the beginning of this post. How do you fix the economy if no one knows how to fix it?

My answer is when in doubt, unleash your countrymen to research and experiment freely. Should any policy or law erected on the alchemy of social science interfere, eject it. Then wait and see.