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April 5, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

05:57

1632 Economics is Voodoo

...just like physics in the middle ages.

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	Hey everybody, Steph, hope you're doing well.
	A little trickle of a thought or two, which I thought would be interesting.
	I was reading an article questioning or opposing the view that economics is a science.
	And, of course, there is a...
	A clash between old economics, which was, to a large degree, classical liberal economics, let's say, and Ricardo and Smith and all those guys, 18th, 19th century, and modern economists, which is more around mathematical analysis and predictions and so on.
	And I would propose a third way of looking at economics, which is that voodoo, right?
	It's voodoo and it's a form of religion or mysticism at the moment.
	And it's actually, in modern economics, with the exception of the Austrian school, is actually reinforcing the power of the state by pretending it can exist in its presence.
	That's right, we will have a coffee.
	So, what I mean by that is that in the Middle Ages, science couldn't develop because matter, physical matter, was not Stable.
	It was considered under the whim of the Creator, right?
	So you can't get the science of medicine effectively developing if you believe that disease is a punishment for sin, right?
	That would not make any sense.
	I mean, we don't view the movement of prisoners into prison as an act of physics or biology, but rather as an act of legislation.
	And as an act of legislation, it's not subject to these kinds of analyses.
	And so when matter was considered subject to the whimsical legislation of God, God could order things to burst into flames, could order people to walk on water, could order fishes to Turn into cats and frogs into toads and all that kind of stuff and witches could fly through the air.
	When matter was magical, when it was subject to the whim of an often demonic but sometimes benevolent, sometimes demonic consciousness, that the devil could tempt you by changing shape and that God could save you by providing signs.
	When physical matter was considered to be subjective and whimsical and ruled by consciousness, There could not really be any such thing as physics.
	And one of the things that physicists, early physicists, faced was condemnation from the church for constraining the will of God.
	To say an object falls to the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second is to say that God can't really change that, that it's a law of nature.
	And they were criticized for constraining the will of God.
	And, you know, the earth...
	It moves around. The sun was heretical in part because it contradicted because of what the Bible was saying, but of course, because it's saying, well, this is a fact.
	And the moment you put facts into reality, you limit the power of God.
	You're basically saying this is a fact and God doesn't interfere.
	God can't or won't or shouldn't or doesn't or whatever.
	And that's a problem. So, right, if physics and biology and medicine and all these things can't develop, and obviously biology couldn't develop if God was considered to have created the species, you got some primitive biology in terms of breeding for various kinds of agricultural efficiencies of crops and animals, but there couldn't really be a science of biology.
	I mean, for instance, when somebody dies only because their soul leaves their body and not as a direct result of any particular physical process, it's kind of hard to have a science of life and death.
	So when matter is magical and ruled by whims, and the body is magical and ruled by whims, and all creatures are magically created and ruled by whims, then there can't be any such thing as a fixed and predictable science.
	Matter is consciousness ruled and whimsical and magical.
	Now, the analogy I'm sure is fairly clear.
	You can't have a science of economics.
	You can't even have a discipline of economics.
	When you have a state running the economy or significant portions or really any portion of the economy, particularly when the state runs the currency, which is the fundamental measure of economics, because without currency, there can't be price.
	And so this government is manipulating price, which is the foundation of market economics and its efficiencies.
	The price signals and efficient allocation of resources based upon the price of supply and demand.
	You can't have that when the government is passing 100,000 regulations a year and managing all the currency and all this that and the other.
	You can't have a science of economics.
	You can't even have a discipline of economics.
	You can have a tomfoolery power excusing bullshit of economics, but you can't have a discipline of economics because the economy is subject to exactly the same whim-based magical interferences that matter and biology was in the Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages more particularly.
	To me, it's kind of funny that as government power over the economy grows, so do the mathematical obsessions of economists.
	Of course, that's because they can't look and say, well, our whole discipline is a joke, because until the government stops interfering randomly and unpredictably in the free market, there's no such thing as economics.
	All economics can say Is that nothing is predictable when the government interferes for political and special interest reasons.
	That there is no such thing as economics when there is a government.
	And economists can certainly say that, but this is why economists can't predict anything, and they can't admit why they can't predict anything, and they can't say that there's no such thing as this discipline until the government stops interfering, because the government can stop interfering in the free market by not being a government, whereas, of course, it's a little more tricky.
	Sorry, it's a little easier to get God not to interfere in physical matter, because God doesn't exist.
	Car, car! Thanks, everybody.

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