The Bogus Laws of Orthodox Economics
Natural functions, economic casuistry, and how sociality emerges from nature
Orthodox economics is based on the neoclassical modelling of the discipline on physics. Specifically, economic phenomena are supposed to work like Newtonian mechanics, as dictated by ironclad equations or “laws” that pick out the essence of economic events, even if that essence is sometimes obscured by real-world complications.
But even the scientific conception of “laws of nature” is dubious, which means that by committing to that conception, without much support from experiments or technological applications, the orthodox economist’s cheerleading for capitalism looks more ideological (theological or moral) than scientific.
That is, real scientists can get away with that deistic confusion (since there’s no scientific positing of a supernatural lawgiver), and that’s because the sciences prove their reliability by solving problems and advancing humanity’s interests. Yet a discipline that strives to be ultraprecise in its explanations, with mathematical formalisms, while lacking those overwhelming social advantages has hardly proved itself, and its arcane discourse takes on a whiff of fraud.
