At 12:18 PM 10/20/97 -0700, Harry Pollard wrote:
>The Classical Political Economy I teach has two Basic Assumptions. The
>whole science rests on these two assumptions. In half century of teaching
>adults, no-one has successfully responded to "Come up with two examples of
>people not described by both Assumptions".
>
>They are:
>
>"Man's desires are unlimited";
>
>"Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion".
Explicitly define "desires" and "least exertion".
What economists usually do is the opposite of science.
Rather than beginning with a hypothesis that contains
explicit definitions of key terms and then trying to
falsify their hypothesis through experiment, they
intentionally leave key terms ambiguous. This allows
them to adjust definitions of key terms to fit whatever
point they are trying to make while taking full advantage
of the normative and emotive (political) value of the terms.
Here is the classic:
"Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an
exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation
is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place
unless both parties do benefit." [p. xv, Milton and Rose
Friedman, FREE TO CHOOSE; AVON, 1979; ISBN 0-380-52548-8]
Although Friedman is one of the most influential economists
of the twentieth century, he is lying. Economists do not
even define the word "benefit" -- let alone measure it.
Jay -- http://dieoff.org
