[blobster]

What Austrians fail to grasp is that human behavior is quite predictable at the population level, or for large groups in general. This is the entire basis of game theory, marketing, sociology, etc. Unsurprisingly, Austrians refuse to acknowledge that economics is subject to science and do not recognize entire fields such as statistics.

It's true that the actions of single individuals cannot be fully predicted, but that's not necessary. Any level of insight is enough to form the basis of a scientific theory. In other words, mainstream economists do not claim that they can perfectly model human behavior, but they do (rightly) claim that they can make educated guesses which are correct more often than not.

[felipeko]

You can predict trends, not laws, using large groups observation. Austrians would not deny that. Trends are not a useful tool for economic policy, are only good tools for entrepreneurship.

[blobster]

You can model behavior, which is very useful for economics.