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Re:Economics Is Not A Natural Science by hyperbovine on Friday August 14, 2009 @12:42PM (#763334)
"...with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems."

There are some fascinating studies that have come out in the past few years demonstrating that many of our economic intuitions and biases as humans actually have an evolutionary basis--basically, that the same behavior can be reliably elicited from chimps, birds, etc. Another thing that comes to mind is Tversky & Kanheman's work on prospect theory, which showed that humans are irrational in very predictable ways. Anyways, my point is that the essay's main argument, which is that the laws of economics are not universal or immutable, is only true in a limited sense. There is no universal truth about economics, but as long as it's us humans who are doing the creating and spending of wealth, we're going to continue to act according to some very deep-seated principles. It's these patterns of behavior that have resulted in markets, selfishness, and all the rest. So things are going to continue to look very much the same. It's sort of like the way a few axioms can give rise to an entire geometry.

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