Not a Science

During the 2008 financial crisis, central banks all over the Western world pumped money to bail out the very financial firms that were responsible for the crisis. As John Dickerson scathingly described:

“Risk is supposed to be about choice and consequence. You take a chance and you win or you lose…companies that helped cripple the financial system were repaid by the government bailout. They took a chance, and lost—but they still won.”

Now contrast the above with how the British government responded to the infamous Irish potato famine in 1845: they ascertained the high severity of the issue and then decided to do nothing! Why? It was a time when Adam Smith’s theory ruled Britain with an iron fist. Felix Martin in his book, Money: The Unauthorized Biography:

“Adam Smith had proved that it was allowing private self-interest to operate as freely as possible that most efficiently achieves the social good…Within seventy years of its publication, Adam Smith's theory of monetary society had attained the status of scientific -- indeed, mathematical -- truth.”

So much so that:

“The new discipline of economics boldly claimed to reduce what had once seemed vital questions of moral and political justice to the mechanical application of objective scientific truths.”

According scientific truth status to anything in the social sciences: is that crazy or what? Richard Feynman was right when he said:

“Because of the success of science, there is, I think, a kind of pseudoscience. Social science is an example of a science which is not a science; they don’t do [things] scientifically, they follow the forms–or you gather data, you do so-and-so and so forth but they don’t get any laws”.

Now guess what the reaction to such a statement normally is? Politically incorrect, they scream. How condescending, how arrogant, they yell. “Truth be damned” is what you can read in the subtitle.

Of course, not everyone in the non-sciences is blind. Like Alan Jacobs:

“Economic flourishing in any given society depends on a great many unpredictable and uncontrollable factors. Often the stars just have to align.”

Sometimes, fields are just different. Just different, not better or worse. Accept that reality and you can deal with them right. Insist that all risk in human activities can be quantified and put into an equation (the hallmark of a “true” science), and you will have the illusion of being in control. Until everything blows up. But hey, we live in a society that likes to shoot the politically incorrect guy.