No you are describing something that economics by definition precludes: we don’t have natural forces in human activities hence why any prediction cannot be made at the confidence we have when we predict how the earth travels the solar system. There are huge problems when we forget that. But this doesn‘t make economics unscientific. That is misunderstanding what science is.
Thanks so much for reading and engaging—really appreciate the thoughtful comment. I understand what you’re saying, and I’d suggest that the core difference here is in how we’re using the word science. It sounds like you’re thinking of science primarily as the description of deterministic physical phenomena—things like planetary motion or chemical reactions. That’s totally valid in a general sense, but it’s not the definition I’m working from. I’m talking about science more narrowly—as a process of structured knowledge discovery, grounded in testability, predictive accountability, and the willingness to revise when reality doesn’t cooperate.
When I say economics isn’t a science, I’m not dismissing the field or its usefulness. I’m speaking specifically about how it behaves as an institution. In mature sciences, models that consistently fail to predict outcomes are revised or discarded. In economics, core assumptions—like rational actors, market equilibrium, or the dangers of public debt—tend to be preserved even in the face of repeated contradiction. Alternative approaches are marginalized rather than brought into structured contention. So the issue isn’t that economics can’t become more scientific—it’s that it often resists the processes that science depends on: falsification, methodological pluralism, and revision.
This isn’t just a technical concern—it has real-world consequences. Economic theory shapes how we govern, legislate, and imagine what’s possible. When people speak of “late-stage capitalism” as destiny, or say we “can’t afford universal healthcare because of the national debt,” they’re drawing rational conclusions within a theory and model that hasn’t been explicitly named to them and has been positioned as objectively true. Our knowledge changes faster than ever before, but economics has actively resisted any change since mainstream ideology established itself in the 1980s. Identifying and interrogating those assumptions isn’t just academic work—it’s a step toward reclaiming public economic imagination and democratic agency (as I like to say: Democracy and Capitalism—two great tastes that taste great together).
And I’d go one step further: the U.S. suffers from a profound, self-imposed—and in many ways authoritarian-led—failure of public economic imagination. We are deliberately constrained in how we think about using economic tools to build the kind of society many of us want. We’ve internalized a worldview that treats markets as natural and public investment as dangerous. That constraint isn’t grounded in physics or necessity—it’s grounded in theory. And we have the power to choose theories, if we understand how our truth about economics has been deliberately guided down a specific path. With that awareness, we will have more creativity about what we can do with our economics—and our politics.
Science and institutional behaviour that claims science unfortunately is not the same. I fully subscribe to that. That is one of the most critical but totally ignored issues of our time. Thank you for clarifying that difference because in that difference is hope we might be able to fix this. I am not very hopeful.
I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. The lay public has unprecedented access to be involved in science - whether it's calling out institutional failures on social media like what we're doing to publishing alternative ideas on academic pre-print servers. There are reasons to be hopeful but it'll take work like this.
That definition is a incomplete. Science is not systematic knowledge. It is a systematic path to establishing knowledge and agreed upon Truth. The key activity of that system is falsification - which the discipline of Economics avoids completely.
In science, truth refers to our best current understanding based on evidence and rigorous testing - what the scientific community accepts as valid based on reproducible observations and experiments. This scientific knowledge is always provisional and subject to revision with new evidence.
Outside of science, truth encompasses broader philosophical, moral, and experiential dimensions that may not be testable through scientific methods - and may ultimately be just personal belief.
As I mentioned before, I'm discussing science and why economics doesn't qualify as one. I already addressed that other forms of truth exist - philosophical, mathematical, moral - but that wasn't my focus. My argument is specifically about whether economics meets the standards we apply to scientific disciplines: reproducible experiments, reliable predictions, and falsifiable hypotheses.
To be clear, I'm critiquing economic theory as an academic discipline, not the real-world economic system itself. The problem is that economic theory fails to scientifically study the actual economy we live in.
Mainstream economics fails these scientific criteria because its theoretical framework actively resists falsification. When theories fail to predict real-world outcomes, proponents simply claim the system is too complex to model accurately. This stands in stark contrast to economic approaches like MMT, which make reliable predictions using empirically grounded tools like stock-flow consistent modeling.
Economics abandoned scientific methodology as far back as the 1940s with the rejection of Abba Lerner's functional finance. Lerner's approach emphasized empirical outcomes over theoretical assumptions, but the profession replaced it with the assumption-heavy framework that became neoclassical orthodoxy.
This creates a fundamental contradiction: mainstream economists claim scientific authority while excusing failed predictions by appealing to complexity. As Truman famously said, he wanted a 'one-handed economist' because his advisors always prefaced advice with 'on the one hand this, but on the other hand that.' You can't have it both ways - either you're practicing science with testable predictions, or you're not.
Identifying these theoretical failures matters because theory shapes how we understand and steer the economy for real-world outcomes. When people talk about the inevitable fall of capitalism or accept 'late-stage capitalism' as destiny or say, "we can't afford universal healthcare because of the National Debt", it's often because their imagination is constrained by the very theoretical problems I'm outlining - they've accepted flawed economic theory as gospel truth.
But connecting back to your original question about truth: mainstream economics is only truth as a belief system, not as a scientific endeavor. When we recognize that distinction and understand the actual power and options available within capitalism, we can take democratic control of our economic future.
As I like to say: 'Democracy and Capitalism - Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together.'
By *a priori* truth I presume you mean things like logical tautologies and mathematical theorems; anything that has any bit to do with the material world, even something as trivial as "the sky is blue"—which is to say the vast majority of truths known to us—is not *a priori* and has to be grounded in experimentation and observation.
Chevan, when you talk about corporate capture regarding the Nobel prize, it's important to realise that the prize for Economics is not actually a 'Nobel' prize in the same way as the others (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace) which were endowed by Alfred Nobel in his will and began being awarded in 1901. It is in fact a prize created by a donation from the Swedish Central Bank in 1969 - the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Nobel himself had absolutely nothing to do with it. The orthodox economics brotherhood decided they wanted to have a prize and gave a lot of money to the Nobel Foundation some 70 years after Nobel had died. It's not technically a Nobel prize at all.
This is a fantastic point and I’m glad you brought it up - thank you for the correction. You’re absolutely right that the economics “Nobel” isn’t actually a Nobel Prize at all.
The fact that it’s really the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” - created by the Swedish Central Bank in 1969, nearly 70 years after Nobel’s death - actually reinforces the institutional capture argument.
This reveals something important: the economics profession created their own prestigious award and successfully positioned it as equivalent to the genuine Nobel Prizes in public perception. Alfred Nobel chose not to include economics among the fields he wanted to honor, but the economics establishment found a way around that decision.
But here’s the crucial part: **regardless of its origins, this prize still powerfully shapes academic behavior**. Tenure-track economists study the award’s track record to understand where to focus their research if they want to advance their careers. They observe what approaches get rewarded and adjust accordingly. Graduate students learn these patterns and often work within those boundaries to improve their prospects for academic success.
This creates a career incentive structure that channels intellectual effort toward orthodox approaches, regardless of their scientific merit. The association with the Nobel name provides public legitimacy while systematically reinforcing particular theoretical frameworks.
The Swedish Central Bank’s role in funding this prize is notable, given that central banks are key institutions where economic theory gets translated into policy. It demonstrates how economic orthodoxy sustains itself through institutional relationships rather than purely through scientific validation.
So thank you for that important clarification - it illustrates how economics has developed institutional mechanisms that operate like scientific recognition while serving to maintain theoretical consistency rather than advance knowledge through open inquiry.
Good essay! But I would like to offer a clarification regarding this paragraph, which follows your list of heterodox schools:
“These schools don't just disagree on policy—they offer completely different explanations for basic economic phenomena like unemployment, inflation, and financial crises. They use different methodologies, rely on different evidence, and reach different conclusions about how economies function.”
My clarification is that these schools disagree *with neoclassical economics*, not necessarily with one another. The way you phrased your statement is ambiguous on this point. In most and possibly all respects, these heterodox schools are mutually compatible. Although they do rely on different evidence and arguments (e.g. behavioral econ vs. MMT) the evidence and arguments of any one of them does not contradict the evidence of the others. On the other hand—and this is important—*all* of the heterodox schools cite evidence that neoclassical economics ignores at the theoretical level that does contradict it. (I specify “at the theoretical level” because neoclassical economists generally acknowledge the empirical findings of behavioral economics, but simply ignore the devastating implications of these findings for their core theoretical axiom of the rationally maximizing individual.)
Furthermore, there is an argument to be made that at least some of these heterodox schools are not only theoretically compatible with one another, but are in fact foundationally inseparable and even theoretically identical. The core contention of Modern Monetary Theory, i.e. that modern fiat money is a creature of the state, presumes an understading of institutions and is itself an institutionalist argument. Put another way, what MMT is telling us is that *money is an institution* (see philosopher Francisco Guala’s book *Understanding Institutions* on this point). For that reason we could see MMT as a branch of institutional economics, albeit one with a particular set of policy recommendations that do not derive directly from the core postulates of institutionalism but rather from observations of how the particular institution of money behaves. It is in that sense more of an applied science, like medicine, where institutional econ is more like physiology.
Thank you for pointing out the important ambiguity in my recent essay and thank you for taking time out to read it! When I wrote that heterodox schools "offer completely different explanations for basic economic phenomena," you're absolutely right that this could be read as these schools disagreeing with each other, when what I meant was that they disagree with orthodox economics. Your clarification really helps sharpen this distinction.
My phrasing was indeed confusing, and your point about theoretical compatibility is well-taken. As you note, all heterodox schools reject the same core orthodox assumptions—rational actors, market equilibrium, perfect information—and they all cite evidence that orthodox economics systematically ignores.
What's particularly insightful is how these approaches often complement rather than contradict each other. Your example of MMT's insight that money is a state institution being fundamentally an institutionalist argument (I like to say Statist) is really illuminating. Behavioral economics' findings about cognitive biases don't conflict with Post-Keynesian insights about uncertainty and instability—they actually reinforce each other (and they do operate at different scopes: macroeconomic vs. consumer-level behavior).
I do think there's still value in recognizing that heterodox schools emphasize different causal mechanisms, even when they're theoretically compatible. A Post-Keynesian might explain the 2008 crisis primarily through Minsky's financial instability hypothesis, while a behavioral economist focuses on herding behavior and overconfidence. Both explanations can be true simultaneously—they're examining different levels of the same phenomenon. The key insight is that unlike orthodox economics, which enforces theoretical uniformity, heterodox approaches allow for this kind of complementary analysis.
What makes your comment particularly valuable is how it highlights something orthodox economics struggles with: recognizing that complex phenomena like economic crises typically involve multiple, interconnected causes. A truly scientific approach would integrate insights from institutional analysis, behavioral psychology, and systemic financial dynamics rather than forcing everything into a single framework. The compatibility of heterodox schools that you describe suggests what mature economic science might actually look like—embracing methodological diversity rather than ideological conformity.
I think your observation about basic science vs. applied science is interesting and could be used to create an association between Keynesianism and MMT, but honestly we're not there yet. The "applied" part assumes the basic science is settled—but as my essay shows, we don't even have agreement on the basic mechanisms of how economies work. Real applied sciences build on proven foundations: engineering builds on physics, medicine builds on biology and chemistry. But MMT is building on institutional economics that is itself contested and not empirically validated in the way physics or biology are.
No you are describing something that economics by definition precludes: we don’t have natural forces in human activities hence why any prediction cannot be made at the confidence we have when we predict how the earth travels the solar system. There are huge problems when we forget that. But this doesn‘t make economics unscientific. That is misunderstanding what science is.
Thanks so much for reading and engaging—really appreciate the thoughtful comment. I understand what you’re saying, and I’d suggest that the core difference here is in how we’re using the word science. It sounds like you’re thinking of science primarily as the description of deterministic physical phenomena—things like planetary motion or chemical reactions. That’s totally valid in a general sense, but it’s not the definition I’m working from. I’m talking about science more narrowly—as a process of structured knowledge discovery, grounded in testability, predictive accountability, and the willingness to revise when reality doesn’t cooperate.
When I say economics isn’t a science, I’m not dismissing the field or its usefulness. I’m speaking specifically about how it behaves as an institution. In mature sciences, models that consistently fail to predict outcomes are revised or discarded. In economics, core assumptions—like rational actors, market equilibrium, or the dangers of public debt—tend to be preserved even in the face of repeated contradiction. Alternative approaches are marginalized rather than brought into structured contention. So the issue isn’t that economics can’t become more scientific—it’s that it often resists the processes that science depends on: falsification, methodological pluralism, and revision.
This isn’t just a technical concern—it has real-world consequences. Economic theory shapes how we govern, legislate, and imagine what’s possible. When people speak of “late-stage capitalism” as destiny, or say we “can’t afford universal healthcare because of the national debt,” they’re drawing rational conclusions within a theory and model that hasn’t been explicitly named to them and has been positioned as objectively true. Our knowledge changes faster than ever before, but economics has actively resisted any change since mainstream ideology established itself in the 1980s. Identifying and interrogating those assumptions isn’t just academic work—it’s a step toward reclaiming public economic imagination and democratic agency (as I like to say: Democracy and Capitalism—two great tastes that taste great together).
And I’d go one step further: the U.S. suffers from a profound, self-imposed—and in many ways authoritarian-led—failure of public economic imagination. We are deliberately constrained in how we think about using economic tools to build the kind of society many of us want. We’ve internalized a worldview that treats markets as natural and public investment as dangerous. That constraint isn’t grounded in physics or necessity—it’s grounded in theory. And we have the power to choose theories, if we understand how our truth about economics has been deliberately guided down a specific path. With that awareness, we will have more creativity about what we can do with our economics—and our politics.
Science and institutional behaviour that claims science unfortunately is not the same. I fully subscribe to that. That is one of the most critical but totally ignored issues of our time. Thank you for clarifying that difference because in that difference is hope we might be able to fix this. I am not very hopeful.
I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. The lay public has unprecedented access to be involved in science - whether it's calling out institutional failures on social media like what we're doing to publishing alternative ideas on academic pre-print servers. There are reasons to be hopeful but it'll take work like this.
In elementary school, we were taught that science is any systematic knowledge. There’s no claim to perfection.
That definition is a incomplete. Science is not systematic knowledge. It is a systematic path to establishing knowledge and agreed upon Truth. The key activity of that system is falsification - which the discipline of Economics avoids completely.
Economics is not a science.
What is Truth ?
What questions do you have? How can I help?
In science, truth refers to our best current understanding based on evidence and rigorous testing - what the scientific community accepts as valid based on reproducible observations and experiments. This scientific knowledge is always provisional and subject to revision with new evidence.
Outside of science, truth encompasses broader philosophical, moral, and experiential dimensions that may not be testable through scientific methods - and may ultimately be just personal belief.
Empirical evidence is not the only source of truth in the Universe. There are some a priori truths.
Could you just be conflating economics with the regime, which is unreliable ?
As I mentioned before, I'm discussing science and why economics doesn't qualify as one. I already addressed that other forms of truth exist - philosophical, mathematical, moral - but that wasn't my focus. My argument is specifically about whether economics meets the standards we apply to scientific disciplines: reproducible experiments, reliable predictions, and falsifiable hypotheses.
To be clear, I'm critiquing economic theory as an academic discipline, not the real-world economic system itself. The problem is that economic theory fails to scientifically study the actual economy we live in.
Mainstream economics fails these scientific criteria because its theoretical framework actively resists falsification. When theories fail to predict real-world outcomes, proponents simply claim the system is too complex to model accurately. This stands in stark contrast to economic approaches like MMT, which make reliable predictions using empirically grounded tools like stock-flow consistent modeling.
Economics abandoned scientific methodology as far back as the 1940s with the rejection of Abba Lerner's functional finance. Lerner's approach emphasized empirical outcomes over theoretical assumptions, but the profession replaced it with the assumption-heavy framework that became neoclassical orthodoxy.
This creates a fundamental contradiction: mainstream economists claim scientific authority while excusing failed predictions by appealing to complexity. As Truman famously said, he wanted a 'one-handed economist' because his advisors always prefaced advice with 'on the one hand this, but on the other hand that.' You can't have it both ways - either you're practicing science with testable predictions, or you're not.
Identifying these theoretical failures matters because theory shapes how we understand and steer the economy for real-world outcomes. When people talk about the inevitable fall of capitalism or accept 'late-stage capitalism' as destiny or say, "we can't afford universal healthcare because of the National Debt", it's often because their imagination is constrained by the very theoretical problems I'm outlining - they've accepted flawed economic theory as gospel truth.
But connecting back to your original question about truth: mainstream economics is only truth as a belief system, not as a scientific endeavor. When we recognize that distinction and understand the actual power and options available within capitalism, we can take democratic control of our economic future.
As I like to say: 'Democracy and Capitalism - Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together.'
By *a priori* truth I presume you mean things like logical tautologies and mathematical theorems; anything that has any bit to do with the material world, even something as trivial as "the sky is blue"—which is to say the vast majority of truths known to us—is not *a priori* and has to be grounded in experimentation and observation.
yes, without a priori being true, non of the a posteriori would be.
Chevan, when you talk about corporate capture regarding the Nobel prize, it's important to realise that the prize for Economics is not actually a 'Nobel' prize in the same way as the others (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace) which were endowed by Alfred Nobel in his will and began being awarded in 1901. It is in fact a prize created by a donation from the Swedish Central Bank in 1969 - the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Nobel himself had absolutely nothing to do with it. The orthodox economics brotherhood decided they wanted to have a prize and gave a lot of money to the Nobel Foundation some 70 years after Nobel had died. It's not technically a Nobel prize at all.
This is a fantastic point and I’m glad you brought it up - thank you for the correction. You’re absolutely right that the economics “Nobel” isn’t actually a Nobel Prize at all.
The fact that it’s really the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” - created by the Swedish Central Bank in 1969, nearly 70 years after Nobel’s death - actually reinforces the institutional capture argument.
This reveals something important: the economics profession created their own prestigious award and successfully positioned it as equivalent to the genuine Nobel Prizes in public perception. Alfred Nobel chose not to include economics among the fields he wanted to honor, but the economics establishment found a way around that decision.
But here’s the crucial part: **regardless of its origins, this prize still powerfully shapes academic behavior**. Tenure-track economists study the award’s track record to understand where to focus their research if they want to advance their careers. They observe what approaches get rewarded and adjust accordingly. Graduate students learn these patterns and often work within those boundaries to improve their prospects for academic success.
This creates a career incentive structure that channels intellectual effort toward orthodox approaches, regardless of their scientific merit. The association with the Nobel name provides public legitimacy while systematically reinforcing particular theoretical frameworks.
The Swedish Central Bank’s role in funding this prize is notable, given that central banks are key institutions where economic theory gets translated into policy. It demonstrates how economic orthodoxy sustains itself through institutional relationships rather than purely through scientific validation.
So thank you for that important clarification - it illustrates how economics has developed institutional mechanisms that operate like scientific recognition while serving to maintain theoretical consistency rather than advance knowledge through open inquiry.
Good essay! But I would like to offer a clarification regarding this paragraph, which follows your list of heterodox schools:
“These schools don't just disagree on policy—they offer completely different explanations for basic economic phenomena like unemployment, inflation, and financial crises. They use different methodologies, rely on different evidence, and reach different conclusions about how economies function.”
My clarification is that these schools disagree *with neoclassical economics*, not necessarily with one another. The way you phrased your statement is ambiguous on this point. In most and possibly all respects, these heterodox schools are mutually compatible. Although they do rely on different evidence and arguments (e.g. behavioral econ vs. MMT) the evidence and arguments of any one of them does not contradict the evidence of the others. On the other hand—and this is important—*all* of the heterodox schools cite evidence that neoclassical economics ignores at the theoretical level that does contradict it. (I specify “at the theoretical level” because neoclassical economists generally acknowledge the empirical findings of behavioral economics, but simply ignore the devastating implications of these findings for their core theoretical axiom of the rationally maximizing individual.)
Furthermore, there is an argument to be made that at least some of these heterodox schools are not only theoretically compatible with one another, but are in fact foundationally inseparable and even theoretically identical. The core contention of Modern Monetary Theory, i.e. that modern fiat money is a creature of the state, presumes an understading of institutions and is itself an institutionalist argument. Put another way, what MMT is telling us is that *money is an institution* (see philosopher Francisco Guala’s book *Understanding Institutions* on this point). For that reason we could see MMT as a branch of institutional economics, albeit one with a particular set of policy recommendations that do not derive directly from the core postulates of institutionalism but rather from observations of how the particular institution of money behaves. It is in that sense more of an applied science, like medicine, where institutional econ is more like physiology.
Thank you for pointing out the important ambiguity in my recent essay and thank you for taking time out to read it! When I wrote that heterodox schools "offer completely different explanations for basic economic phenomena," you're absolutely right that this could be read as these schools disagreeing with each other, when what I meant was that they disagree with orthodox economics. Your clarification really helps sharpen this distinction.
My phrasing was indeed confusing, and your point about theoretical compatibility is well-taken. As you note, all heterodox schools reject the same core orthodox assumptions—rational actors, market equilibrium, perfect information—and they all cite evidence that orthodox economics systematically ignores.
What's particularly insightful is how these approaches often complement rather than contradict each other. Your example of MMT's insight that money is a state institution being fundamentally an institutionalist argument (I like to say Statist) is really illuminating. Behavioral economics' findings about cognitive biases don't conflict with Post-Keynesian insights about uncertainty and instability—they actually reinforce each other (and they do operate at different scopes: macroeconomic vs. consumer-level behavior).
I do think there's still value in recognizing that heterodox schools emphasize different causal mechanisms, even when they're theoretically compatible. A Post-Keynesian might explain the 2008 crisis primarily through Minsky's financial instability hypothesis, while a behavioral economist focuses on herding behavior and overconfidence. Both explanations can be true simultaneously—they're examining different levels of the same phenomenon. The key insight is that unlike orthodox economics, which enforces theoretical uniformity, heterodox approaches allow for this kind of complementary analysis.
What makes your comment particularly valuable is how it highlights something orthodox economics struggles with: recognizing that complex phenomena like economic crises typically involve multiple, interconnected causes. A truly scientific approach would integrate insights from institutional analysis, behavioral psychology, and systemic financial dynamics rather than forcing everything into a single framework. The compatibility of heterodox schools that you describe suggests what mature economic science might actually look like—embracing methodological diversity rather than ideological conformity.
I think your observation about basic science vs. applied science is interesting and could be used to create an association between Keynesianism and MMT, but honestly we're not there yet. The "applied" part assumes the basic science is settled—but as my essay shows, we don't even have agreement on the basic mechanisms of how economies work. Real applied sciences build on proven foundations: engineering builds on physics, medicine builds on biology and chemistry. But MMT is building on institutional economics that is itself contested and not empirically validated in the way physics or biology are.