"First, let's assume the cow is a sphere".
It is worse than that, because at least physics is validated by experimental data.
Much of (macro in particular) Economics is a set of axioms that are seldom predictive.
With no basis in reality, we've brainwashed people to believe the bottom lines of the elite are to be protected. That's the outcome sought of our educational system.
It fascinates me how, on the one hand, we complain about how lazy people are. How much inducement the proles need. "Oh they're just lazy. Push em harder."
If we need to push people that hard, perhaps "economy of effort" is built into the species. It's a weird cognitive dissonance.
"They want something for nothing! But I want to maintain my elite status built upon your efforts!"
But that challenges the basis of elite power. If we all quit producing for them, they lose. So we're "induced to produce" under the constraints they define: no food, shelter, healthcare.
Not only that, we fail to realize the continuing incentives for them to act in that way, even when acting as "researchers". Here is a highly relevant Propublica investigative piece on academic economists as consultants: https://www.propublica.org/article/these-professors-make-mor...
There are a other systems that we have at least some historical evidence to show will produce even better outcomes for the majority.
The problem is those are undermined almost as quickly as they are brought up. See post about brainwashing people to protect the bottom line.
People point to places like Venezuela and USSR as examples of socialism not working, for example. While ignoring that both those states were not managed by the working class (as classical socialism typically calls for), but elite masters, their bank rollers, and external forces pushing them to abandon their ways for western capitalism (economic sanctions, cutting off access to necessary trade).
By some measures, all of which fail to account for the fact that relative deprivation is a substantial source of experienced disutility.
That really depends on the definition of »works«. If one is satisfied with the people doing the heavy lifting being a bit better off while a few overseeing everything are extremely better off, yes, then it works.
In a previous age, these would be moral principles and social norms - now it's political beliefs.
No one would argue that astronomy isn't a science. Traditional university macroeconomics is a different beast. Comparison with astrology is apt.
"There is a story that has been going around about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist who were stranded on a desert island with no implements and a can of food. The physicist and the chemist each devised an ingenious mechanism for getting the can open; the economist merely said, 'Assume we have a can opener'!"[1]
Yanis Varoufakis, after the drama surrounding his (very) brief term as Greek's Minister of Finance describes[2] the problem simply and plainly: "Understanding economics well impedes an understanding the economy." His continued explanation why [ibid] might be the ultimate example of how easy it is to sell bullshit as long as you dress it up properly with the trappings of math/stat/logic.
This gets weird with software businesses as these companies tend to insulate from losses relatively well. This coupled with the fact that in some markets there is no way to generate additional value without a huge public investment happening upstream (utilities) is why a lot of VC goes so crazy for it. Keeping the cash flowing is the only way to avoid being taxed profusely – All you can do in some situations is raise rents and spend hastily, for better or for worse.
It's being narrowed, but it still exists. Until rather recently many courts would recognize "do well understood process X, but on a computer" as patentable.
http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/patents-for-algorithms-h...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8310084
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-p...
So, for instance, software is protected by patents, oil and gas is protected by mineral rights, drugs are protected by patent law, entertainment is protected by IP rights, and so on.
In so far as there is competition, it often arises when the rent-seeking motivates people to disrupt the government protection by making it useless.
In software, people have lived with that since the beginning because it moves so fast. But even in slow moving fields like energy, we see new tech rendering the old protections less important.
I am not saying society has not paid a steep price for rent seeking behavior but that it has been part and parcel of all capitalism forever, and not unique to the American experience.