Faustine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> It's not about central planning at all. Making any policy without using
> rigorous data-based research to get a sense of the way things really are
> (through analysis and measurement) rather than the way your theory tells you
> they OUGHT to be, is a dangerous prospect no matter what your politics are. The
> goal is more clear thinking and less bias.
This is naive empiricism -- the idea that "theory follows facts".
How do you know which "facts" of the multitude available to follow
without some prior existing theory about which facts are important?
Economics is a theoretical social science ("political economy") and
your view of it depends on your starting axioms and whether they
favour the individual or not.
Do do you measure human behaviour?
You can't. We aren't electrons that can be measured or reduced to
Excel spreadsheets rather we are rational thinking, acting agents.
The methodology of the physical sciences isn't suitable for the social
sciences. Further it leads to a fallacy amongst engineers and the
technically minded that you can "engineer" society in a "scientific"
way.
--
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott [EMAIL PROTECTED]
travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. -- mark twain
