[ants_everywhere]

I think with all economic policy it's good to weigh the pros and cons and have a serious discussion of them.

What I object to is that in practice people just side with their politics "team" like in sports and create post-hoc justifications for policy created for unrelated reasons.

I'm in favor of evidence-based trade policy, but this isn't that unfortunately. The closest thing we have to evidence-based policy is the economic consensus, and the current administration is making a big show of disagreeing with the consensus for non-evidence-based reasons.

[evidencetamper]

It is impossible to establish causality in complex economic systems to be able to have evidence based decisions.

The current economic direction is not a consensus. The Western democracies are increasingly politically polarized and economically volatile.

Between the many different crises (unaffordable real estate, populational collapse, unsustainable environmental practices and global warming, increasing inequality, hollowing out of small and medium sized cities, and the list goes on), it is very difficult to justify the status quo.

[maxerickson]

There's also not really an objective outcome for a given policy, because you don't have a single grouping with aligned preferences.

You can estimate the impact objectively, but not whether that impact is good or bad.

[ants_everywhere]

If you don't like democracies or science then what is your proposed solution?

[evidencetamper]

That's an unfortunate and charged statement that misrepresents what I said.

A fundamental aspect of science is rigor. And a fundamental aspect of democracy is opposition.

[ants_everywhere]

But your position is that you're opposed to evidence based policy. Which means you can't realistically hope to be in favor of an informed populace or democracy.

And you don't understand what the economic consensus is so you don't know what you don't know and aren't in a position to assess the level of rigor.

Plus your other comments, e.g. calling drug users zombies and criminals, make it clear that the anti-democratic impulses shown in this thread aren't just a one-off accident.