Mathematical models aren't real in the same way as human social life is. Just like social structures, they are accorded certain laws, which determine their order; but human social structures have real effects, whereas one can modify axioms in a mathematical model and nothing changes until you apply that model to social life. By all means, math can model certain things from basic, accepted axioms that even we aren't aware of and give us conclusions we could've never predicted; but to pretend that this somehow implies that our axioms, which we constructed, are somehow "right" or "wrong" in and of themselves, and not in their relation to how we use such math to organize society--I believe that logic is extremely flawed.
Political ideology is always in the service of constructing a logic to sustain itself, consciously or not, someone constructing a set of axioms that just so happen to lead to the political conclusion they find most favorable, and then they call those axioms true. Whatever truth value someone ascribes to mathematical axioms, whether they be "right" or "wrong," is far less important than for what purpose they are employed.
Weather reports have a lot of math behind them, yet they're regularly wrong. I wonder what's the underlying reason for that? I also wonder whether that reason could also affect economics?
Wonderful comment. We'd require a whole lot more information and processing power in order to be able to accurately predict the weather, and if we had that, we would be able to accurately model and predict a whole host of things.
Like with anything, there is the objective reality that none of us can see, and then there is the constructed reality placed on top of it.
Economics used to be called political economy and split into economics and political science. Economists are well aware that things like 'property' and 'markets' are not some universal absolutes, but engaged in a larger social context. There are whole sub-fields of economics studying all these things.
Sure some macro economics that try to abstract over a huge amount of things, by necessary (its literally called 'macro') but even then they are aware that high level decisions have political implications.
These anti economics hate mostly generated by people who don't actually follow the discussion within the economic field rather believe in some leftist fantasy buggy man version of the economic field.
Joan Robinson: The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
That's the kind of thing people say when math tells them what they want is not feasible. Surely the math must be wrong!