Economics Still Not a Science

In response to someone or another, noted economist and all round great guy, Karl Smith

believe[s that] each one of these represents a prediction of the economics community that was at odds with the conventional wisdom at the time.

1. The price and quantity of objects sold are determined jointly by the desires of buyers and costs of sellers.

And has 13 more predictive claims that are "true" in the same sense. What's missing? The buyers' income is missing.  My desire for an Surly LHT isn't going to get me one.

Second, the sellers' desired profit, which isn't a "cost" in any meaningful sense of the word. As I understand profit, it's what's leftover after all the bills are paid. You could run a business that made exactly as much as it cost to run it and still stay in business or you tack on 10 percent or 2 or even 5. In a profiting seeking system, the prices of goods and services represent the maximum a seller can charge a buyer and, not surprisingly, the quantity represents the amount the producer thinks he or she can sell at a desired level of profit.

Or maybe not, maybe through the markets' magic people who never see one another send out brain waves in a complicated negotiation over prices paid relative to costs incurred. The obvious silliness of this version of market exchange is one of the residuals of letting 18th century thinking dominated 21st century exchanges.

Consider this one:

The wages of workers in a free market are determined by the amount the marginal worker produces not the average.

Workers' wages are determined by what the owner can be made to pay, unless, of course, he thinks that 19th century America wasn't a free market.

Neither of these claims are close to being lawlike scientific claims, which is what his interlocutor is calling for, and certainly neither holds up as a description of reality. And yet Karl Smith, whose name most likely determined that he would become an economist, want to insist that economic is so a science.

On the other hand, 1 of these sentences is true:

In short, Manzi’s true point shouldn’t be that economists falsely assert scientific knowledge were there is none. It should be that we are arrogant pricks. I think many economists would agree.

Guess which one.