clipped from: www.businesshackers.com Modern economics is nothing more than “Social Darwinism” (the politics — NOT the science) as first revealed by God to the Dominican Friar St. Thomas Aquinas 750 years ago, and then perfected by the Physiocrats 230 years ago. Unfortunately, God didn’t bother to reveal the Laws of Thermodynamics to St. Thomas at the same time as he was doing “free markets”. But then it’s not too surprising considering the fact that God also neglected to mention that the Earth orbited the Sun.
#1. A fundamentally incorrect “method”: the economist uses “correlation” and “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” (after-the-fact) reasoning, rather than the “scientific method” and biological theories of behavior:
#2. A fundamentally inverted world view: the economist sees the environment as a subsystem of the economy, rather than the other way around. In other words, economists are trained to believe that natural resources come from “markets” rather than the “environment”. The historical analogy is Johann Kepler and Tycho Brahe watching the dawn together. Kepler sees the sun come into view as the earth turns; Brahe sees the sun begin its daily journey around a static earth.
#4. A fundamentally incorrect view of his raison d’être: the economist sees “Homo economicus” as a “Bayesian utility maximizer”, rather than “Homo sapiens” as a “primate”:
#3. A fundamentally incorrect view of “money”: the economist sees “money” as nothing more than a medium of exchange, rather than as social power — or “political power”:
#5. A fundamentally incorrect view of economic élan vital: the economist sees economic activity as a function of infinite “money creation”, rather than a function of finite “energy stocks” and finite “energy flows”.