> Once our societies will be ruled by technocratic dictators applying the science of economics to the whole market you could write articles like this.
I've lived in one such state (only for like 8 years, but still). It was a complete failure. They had to inroduce martial law to keep people in line, and finally it defaulted and dictators left on their own.
It didn't help that the science applied was marxism-leninism, but I'm not sure any of modern theories are that much better if you let a dictator follow them to the letter.
I'm not sure that marxism-leninism is a science, but if we're going to use the Soviet Union in the 70-80s as an example of failure, one could just as well use success of China of the 00's.
Most economic theories are tested by the scientific method, and it doesn't seem that was the case in the Soviet Union or its satellites, which I assume you are referring to.
Frankly, by the 80s it was difficult to see the Soviet system as much more than a kleptocratic gerontocracy (theft by the government controlled by the old). The methods of distribution were no more communist than those currently used in China.
> Most economic theories are tested by the scientific method
I don't think they are. Can you give me an example of a prominent theory developed in the last thirty years that is considered by the mainstream to be debunked by data?
I even agree with you that economics is pretty soft as science goes, more math but also a lot of p-hacking, but... they are argued, provide data, and are evaluated just like the other Social Sciences. See Picketty as a pop-econ example with plenty of research backing.
The idea that in order for something to be a science a prominent theory developed in the last 30 years has to be debunked by data is silly. Most of the questionable basis for economics is much more than 30 years old (1988?). I might as well ask you the same question in Physics... is Physics no longer a science?
I'm not a physicist but the discovery of the Higgs boson probably put paid to a number of competing theories [0].
Some papers probably are well-reviewed and evaluated. But as a small experiment, I picked a paper at random (Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work [1]) from this year's AEA conference and had a look through it. Despite having a promising title, there is (to my mind) no content in there. Nothing but unjustified assumptions about 'production functions' and 'productivity'.
I don't see how a paper like that tells us anything about artificial intelligence or automation or work.
Well, kinda. The Higgs and Higgsless proposals mostly go back to the 60s and mid 70s, even if some papers are later. The actual discovery was on 2012 40-50 years later and the Nobel handed out.
A random short paper from even a good journal like Phys Rev Letters is unlikely to be Nobel earthbreaking either, much less have effort to debunk it.
As an undergrad I had to discover that the 20 year olf PRL used as a basis for the 2 week Lab (Thorium C x-section) actually had an incorrect analysis. All data taken was at the wrong energies so we had to spot the error, rederive the equation and values to measure it correctly before the halflife brought our counts down too low.
That PRL was never corrected and the TAs comment was, "that'll teach you to trust some random derivation you found in an article somewhere". Similar story about the incorrect Hydrogen radius expectation value integrating factor in Baym. Even text books aren't always correct.
True, but in our current regime in the US, it seems that both sides assiduously ignore technocrats in nearly every field. I think this is because the magnitude of our problems has been calling for large scale change in several related fields for some time.
Of course, the trouble is that the technocrats are supposed to tell the government how to do something, but we seem to have fixated on actually doing nothing while looking busy. Our government would rather not change, in spite of all external evidence that we should.
I've lived in one such state (only for like 8 years, but still). It was a complete failure. They had to inroduce martial law to keep people in line, and finally it defaulted and dictators left on their own.
It didn't help that the science applied was marxism-leninism, but I'm not sure any of modern theories are that much better if you let a dictator follow them to the letter.