A forced analogy between economics and the history of medicine

[communicator]

I don't want to bang on about the same old same old, but isn't it about time we acknowledge that mainstream economics is simply wrong. We've been wrong before. Medicine was wrong until about 200 years ago. Physics was wrong at the time of Aristotle. We can look back to the past and say 'In the 17th century they were right about this, wrong about

Comments

[sheenaghpugh]

Mary Renault's Simonides on why he doesn't answer doctors honestly when they ask the secret of his great age and good health: "It would be uncivil to say that whenever in my travels I get a touch of fever, I go quietly to bed and send for the local wise-woman." (The Praise Singer)

[communicator]

I remember that. I often wonder whether if I had been born in those days I would have been so sensible. I think it probably depends on the class you were born into.

[nancylebov]

Um, communism worked *worse* than capitalism-- it promised prosperity but brought poverty and bad government.

Or are you using a broad definition of communism?

This is a kickstarter to do research into how successful socialist governments do it.

[communicator]

Obviously we had less poverty than the Eastern Bloc, but was this because we were more effective at making stuff, or just because we exploited the developing world more ruthlessly. Because it seems to me our prosperity is just at the expense of other people. And that prosperity doesn't seem sustainable in the long term.

It is too early to say which has failed more drastically: communism of capitalism. For example, capitalism might result in the death of a couple of billion people in the next fifty years, due to environmental collapse. Potentially more than that. Arguably communism would have had the same bad effect, and it was just that we lasted a couple of decades longer.

Erst kommt das Fressen, dan kommt die Morale

[executrix]

Soviet joke: "Comrade, how can you say that there is no difference? Capitalism is the oppression of man by man, and communism is the exact opposite!"