Posted: Sep 10, 2013 8:44 pm
Loren Michael wrote:
I'm sure you do.
Do you disagree that a put-up-or-shut-up mechanism as I gestured toward would be beneficial with respect to keeping extreme claims not sincerely held from cropping up as often as they do?
I apoligize for being late with this reply but I have been ill and quite unable to post these past few months. I'm better now although I'm not yet sure I can post consistently.
Since eonomics is not a science, I don't see how a "put up or shut up" mechanism could be made to work. Anyone can make any claim or prediction or assertion about our econnomic future and all we can do is subject them to various tests of logic or reasonableness or plausibility.
For example, it's plausible that an economic collapse could occur at almost any time, because past collapses have been sufficiently surprising and frequent to illustrate the possibility. As much as many would like there to be, there are no guranatees against collapse in economics, especially perhaps the economics of today, which are just one big gamble.
My own considered opinion is that we cannot continue to operate an economic system that arose in earlier times which has become entirely inconsistent with and disconneted from modern knowledge about the way things work and in the face of contemporary economic needs. It's not the 1900's anymore. We have entered upon a scientific age in which nearly everything is done based on scientific knowledge and brainpower, yet our economics remains mired in unscientific ways, ways that tend to produce dysfunction, social chaos and loss, and disorder.
Evolution to science based economics seems inevitable because civilization requires the stability it would allow us to achieve, without which we're at great risk.