Please tell me how economics can ever be a purely scientific endeavor.

People learn new things all the time. They gain skills, lose skills, gain knowledge, and lose knowledge every second of every hour of every day. Those losses and gains affect individuals' values - even assuming they were rationally-based decisions in the first place (and we know that's an unreliable assertion). As values change, so do peoples' perceptions and evaluations of value, which then translates into differing behaviors in the market.

In order to predict with any accuracy or specificity any economic activities, one would have to not only have an understanding of the history of every individual in a particular decision pool, but the history of any in the potential decision pool, AND they would have to account for the irrationality in human decision-making. Science deals only with the rational - the concrete. Thus, the very definition of the subject matter (dealing with personal choice) makes the study of economics to be a study of morals and values as much as the interchange of goods and money. Is there a scientific side to the matter? Absolutely. Can it be rendered solely as science? Not as long as humans are agents.

I beg to differ, in order to buy something (capital, raw materials, labor, etc.) you will not get it cost free even with interest rates as low as they are now. Most companies use capital that is borrowed hence there is the cost of interest. Being that you must pay labor and raw materials as well as other administrative costs, I don't see why you say capital is not important......Perhaps reading Hawkins "The new economy" might better frame this topic that I can.

We cannot judge people of more than two centuries ago by the standards we hold today. Standards based upon vastly increased knowledge. The greatness of Adam Smith is not that he said the last word in economics, but that he said the first.

Hume committed the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept frequently, as did most philosophers in history, including those today.

Aristotle, the father of reason, has greatness not because he said the last word in logic, but because he said the first.

My point is to stress thinking is a process, not a conclusion.

Of course economics is not science in the sense of mathematics because it deals with how to use scarce resources in a world of virtually unlimited uses. The allocation, in my opinion, should be based upon what people want (free market) and not upon what they are told they can have (command market). However, it is a science when combined with the science of thought.

You are the first person that I have read who has uttered the truth that "most of economics is not science....."
It can't be based upon how it is used and studied today. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that if economics were a science, it wouldn't be economics.

I'm very far from an expert on economics, but it appears to me that most economists don't understand economics because they have no concept of the meaning of freedom.

Capital is not important to economic growth. Inventions are what create capital not the other way around.

Wrong. People have certain defined characteristics and abilities.

You can't solely base economics on science because it deals with how people evaluate value propositions, which are subjective in large degree. If one could derive economics solely based on science, there would be no stock market because there would be no speculation - no guesswork into what could happen. This is the part I found incredibly difficult to swallow in Asimov's Foundation series: the notion that some part of the human race had been able to deterministically predict the outcome of mankind.

Ain't called "The Dismal Science" for nothin' ;)

Sowell is a brilliant scio-economist, but he also does not ask the right questions. Economics got off to the wrong start and has never corrected. In fact most of economics is not science explicitly not based on science. For instance, Adam Smith was a great friend of David Hume. Hume attacked science and reason with his attack on induction, his attack on cause and effect, and his attack on rational ethics with his is-ought problem. Smith never questioned him on this.

For other examples see http://hallingblog.com/2015/02/12/the...

I think a better set of questions might be geared to a business 101 level:

1) How does the cost of capital influence the cost of goods?

2) How does that cost of labor influence the cost of goods?

3) How does the cost of raw materials influence the cost of goods

4) How do taxes influence the cost of goods?

5) How do you determine the amount of profit on goods to be sold?

Answer: They are all added together with a profit margin (big business from 2 - 15%) and from there a cost of the product is determined.

Last Question:

What will finally determine whether or not this product is brought to market (this one I leave to you to answer)?

The answers are not boring. Thomas Sowell quotes a British economist named Lionel Robbins, who gave the classic definition of economics: Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

Sowell goes on to explain:

" What does "scarce" mean? It means that people want more than there is.
...

"Not only scarcity but also "alternative uses" are at the heart of economics. If each resource had only one use, economics would be much simpler. But water can be used to produce ice or steam by itself or innumerable other mixtures and compounds in combination with other things. A virtually limitless number of products can also be produced from wood or from petroleum, iron ore, etc. How much of each resource should be allocated to each of its many uses? Every economy has to answer that question, and each one does, in one way or another, efficiently or inefficiently. Doing so efficiently is what economics is all about."

There are only two basic choices in how an economy runs: free or by command. All other forms are “mixed.” The free market is not only philosophically superior because it respects individuals who trade with each other, it selects which good real people want, and produces those goods more efficiently than a command economy.

For a complete explanation of the phenomena of the free market, I recommend Sowell’s book: “Basic Economics.”

Henry Ford had plenty of patents (innovation is a nonsense word meant to obscure reality) see https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&t...

I would love a cite that Rand observed that inventions are often independent of the market. I have read almost very thing Rand wrote and watched almost all of her public appearances and never heard any such thing

Regardless the economist B.. Zorina Khan and the economist Jacob Schoomkler overwhelming showed that most inventors invent in the largest market. Once again Mike M is ??????

I used the word innovation instead of invention, because some innovations that are not inventions are gamechangers. For example, Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but his use of mass production methods changed the game.

Von Mises and Rand's observation that invention is often independent of the market was a remarkable observation. Most people think that "necessity is the mother of invention". While usually true, there are some exceptions to that rule, as you, von Mises, and Rand noted.

What is entrepreneurship? is a debate that the Austrians have been having for most of a century. Your questions are all important to someone who intends to go into business. Invention precedes production and invention is often (not always; not even usually) independent of the market. Both Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand observed that.

However, profit must be possible, or no motive for production exists. Note the difference between production and creation. Chester Carlson could have kept his invention to himself, making copies for himself alone. He chose.

Moreover, entrepreneurship can be bringing existing goods to new markets, lowering inefficiencies, or lowering risks, or, of course, accepting risk and making a profit on it. None of those is invention in the primary sense.

However, taking an existing object or process that is not being produced, not "commercialized" and bringing it into production - for profit - is, indeed, the only way that real per capita increases.

yep

I was referring to the questions at the top of the thread, not what is inside the link. The cause of real per capita increases is the invention. That is the subject of your book. To us, that answer is obvious, but it certainly is not the answer that the rest of the world "feels" is the answer to your question.

Perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying, but there is no question more important than what is the cause of real per capita increases in per capita income.

Some better questions are as follows.

1) What competition is out there currently?
2) What new innovations do I anticipate? And from whom?
3) What is the market demand as a function of price?
4) How will such innovation affect the market demand vs. price curve?