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Please tell us who you are replying to Trumpton.
If you don't use the correct method, as the Admins have explained, over and over again, the thread becomes incomprehensible.

Mart

Warren,

I am not a Luddite, far from it, but capitalism impedes invention for profit and growth. Built in obsolescence, for example.
We need proud inventors and scientists who will make things that will last a thousand years, for the love of it.

By the way Malthus was right and the population of the planet Earth cannot now be supported by its resources; and that is why millions die of starvation every year. Of course war reduces the population!

I think that the two World Wars were a conspiracy by the ruling classes to annihilate the flower of our youth and prevent proletarian revolutions that were incipient. The optimum phase of capitalism is war because then production goes into overdrive using cheap labour and weapons of mass destruction are very expensive and can only be used once.

Mike Freeman.

Never short of a reply are you.
Malthus might have been wrong but the almighty, allseeing Wazzer....never.

Mart

Warren,

I don't feel like commenting on all your mundane refutations except to say that people who say: "So what it's all economic growth." when commenting on the barbarity of war are very cynical and misanthropic.

The late stage global capitalism of the 21st century is rather different from the early 19th Century entrepreneurship. It is a world where the obscene merchants of mass murder, arms dealers are highly successful paragons.

Capitalism is not the only economic system and far from being a science "economics" cannot eradicate the human factor which rules out predictability.

The fuel of global capitalism is oil and there is about ten years supply left and so far no one has invented an alternative fuel to keep the motor running. Already nations are fighting over what is left and it will get worse.
The future is Green prepare for a very different world now if you want to survive.
Mike Freeman.

PS: Obesity is far more common in the UK and the USA than Italy

Warren,
Just to refute your main conception that economics is a science. I reiterate:

"economics" cannot eradicate the human factor which
rules out predictability.

You say:
"Many sciences involve human beings - e.g. psychology and human biology. Ruling out predictability is unnecessary for a subject to be a science. A science is something where evidence is used to make predictions about future behaviour, which economics does. "

Whereas:
Economics has no underlying physical reality which means it is not a science but social technology. In other words economics is a game played by people who believe in the rules of a game that they have constructed themselves and have agreed to play by.

Is that clear?

Mike Freeman.

Warren,
Go on playing your games with the cards stacked against you but a lot of the younger generation will be playing a different game!
Mike Freeman.