>But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000.
Which economist are you referring to here? It's hard to even see what specific policy conclusions you're critiquing here, beyond a vague strawman against "free market assumptions".
That isn't a vague strawman, that's a great point. Economists work from assumptions, which can be flawed in two ways: they can be blatantly wrong (see the work Kahneman and Tversky did on the rational individual hypothesis) and they can be unfalsifiable (you can't always gather data about the assumption itself). There is a good essay on this from Tirole (yet a very mainstream economist) here: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/...
You're pointing to a critique of an assumption, what I'm saying can you name a specific economic policy or position given by an economist that is used in real public policy and then we can measure the merits of those policies and their assumptions as opposed to the counterfactuals. I'd bet 9/10 times the chosen policy likely would have been the most logical option.
After all, it's not like the epistemologies of the other humanities stands on far more shakier grounds...
Well for whom? Another aspect of this problem is an economic solution can have winners and losers. An economic policy that invokes slavery as solution to labor issues may actually be 'logical' but clearly puts the interests of one group over another. Economics is just the science resource allocation after all. People have some serious biases when it comes to deciding policy on who gets what and how.
I've asking multiple posters to give a specific policy example to critique and so far all of you have been unable to do so, instead dancing around and critiquing vague notions of a possibility of bias without giving concrete examples. Very postmodern, but this is why actual policymakers don't listen to critique like this.
There is no economics that involves enslaving other humans. Not slavery. Not ever. However, in debt in perpetuity is a thing. So you have to work to pay, so you can live, so you can work, so you can pay…
Debt crisis is a real problem. We have borrowed more than we can ever repay, all nations, for the last 30 years. Both sides. Just drove right off the cliff.
Which is fine, as long as your assumptions are good models of reality. When your assumptions are essentially articles of faith your models tend to be about as good as the guys who interpret patterns in chicken bones.
