[ignostic]

I'd agree that the paper makes claims it can't begin to back up in the real world - I originally said pretty much that. But to say that we couldn't come up with enough facts to prove something seems to show a lack of imagination. No one's saying it's easy, but with good data and smart people it's not an unsolveable problem.

Really, though, I'm not sure the conclusion would do much to convince people. The debate between socialism and capitalism has never been purely economic. Most people's positions have a lot more to do with their core values and what they believe is fair.

[parrotdoxical]

When I see a hypothesis which is THAT sweeping, there's no reason to waste the time of trying to find data to support the hypothesis or a refutation of it. I mean quite literally it is so sweeping as to be meaningless. The more broad you make a hypothesis, the more difficult it is to find evidence to support it. This is especially evident in economics, which is not nearly as hermeneutic and self-sufficient as, say, physics or mathematics.

You may be right that I'm espousing a lack of a certain kind of imagination, but I don't want to adopt the kind of imagination that tacitly accepts the validity of a hypothesis to be explored. The willingness to accept THAT kind of a hypothesis to me, in fact, belies a different kind of lack of a imagination. I am critical of the value structure that would create the assumptions that would lead to the OP's hypothesis, and my prescription is simple: pare down the scope of the hypothesis. Be specific. It's not that the debate between capitalism and socialism has never been purely economic, but in fact has mostly been ideology driven. Statistics are contextualized in rhetoric by ideological worldviews, and I've never been a fan of arguing/accepting arguments by leaps of faith. Skepticism of the law of excluded middle and all that.