[quantumgarbage]

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/...

[corimaith]

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...

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

> the most logical option

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Economists work from assumptions

All models start with givens…

[idiotsecant]

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.

[quantumgarbage]

Sure, that does not mean all models are equal.

Economics both describe and prescribe, so those models should be evaluated on their predictive power and on whether they have actually done any good.