"Economics" is the wide umbrella of phenomena involving human interaction and exchange of goods/services that we would like to be able to explain, understand, and predict. It encompasses questions like "What effect would increasing the payroll tax have on revenues?" that we would like to answer, or "What explains a particular pattern in price fluctuations in a certain commodities market over the last N years?" or "How should we manage money supply in order to maximize the growth rate of GDP?"

All of those questions are about phenomena (admittedly high level abstract phenomena) in the real world. There exist different theories that attempt to explain and answer all those questions. Those theories may or may not be scientific, depending on how they are used and how answering the questions is approached. Economics is a broad enough subject that there really is no overarching theory of economics, just like there is no broad overall theory of biology, or even physics. There are also theories that are competing with each other.

In other words, the study of economics may either be scientific or not.

As an example, you could go to a tarot reader and ask whether or not the Dow Jones industrial average will go up by at least 5% next year. It's an economic question, but the method you are using to try to answer it would be decidedly non-scientific.

Ah well we differ in our views than. To me economics is a subpart of praxeology.

It sounds like a semantic difference, or maybe a language barrier. Do you think those who study the kind of questions I referred to but use other systems besides praxeology are not studying economics? What would you call it?

You've said this a couple of times and it's not a logical truism. This is the equivalent of saying:

Every plant is green.
I have a green plant right here and thus it is impossible to disprove.

Of course you can have one hundred thousand green plants, it only takes one red plant to make that statement false.

Also, the statement seems to be used more along the lines of "Every human ALWAYS acts rationally" and that's obviously falsifiable, even if I act rationally to falsify it. I'm not particularly impressed with some of the absolutes in the link amp gave me, either - that the state before the action and after the action are always the states concerned in the actor's decision. I believe there are some actions where the state *during* the act is what is important (since he insists that all actions take time, then there is always a "during the action" state), and the state after the action may not enter in the decision at all.
There was also a statement that the utility of having X units of a good is always strictly more than the utility of having X-1 units of a good. This is clearly wrong; it should be "equal to or less". It is trivially obvious that I could have a surplus of a good that is completely worthless to me, and losing some of that surplus won't change my utility function at all.

I mean, these are minor nitpicks, but if you are going to rely on the absolute ironclad logic of the system, then the statements damn well better be precise in their meaning.

That would be because you've decided that that method of approaching economics is The One True Method, to the point where you dismiss all other approaches offhand.

Re: To prove that not all actions are rational requires rational action

True. OTOH, if I act rationally and prove that someone else does not, have I not proven the axiom incorrect?

I have to agree with WN here. To draw a parallel to another discipline, Time Cube Guy has some statements on physics - but it's not science.

Incidentally, you are all educated stupid, because Time Cube Guy is right.

It occurs to me that dismissing all other forms of economics offhand as "not even economics" because they disagree with your preferred method is irrational. What if some new way of approaching economics appears that isn't based on praxeology that predicts and explains better?

You're forgetting that praxeology is "a priori provably true" and thus nothing else could explain anything better.

This is why I'm having trouble with this. An unchangeable concept that is right because it exists and can never be wrong doesn't fit my world view, at all.

Yea, I'd much rather talk through some IP concepts, 'cause I'm not entirely certain how I feel about them. It's quite possible I could be convinced that they should be thrown out altogether, but then again, I really like watching big budget movies, and those would probably die off, so it would take some fancy talking to get me to that point.

I have a IP post brewing but it's too long in my mind and I can't summon the will power to write it all out. Too many different threads to that conversation.

The problem I'm wrestling with re: IP is that, although I take it as fundamental that a man owns the product of his labor without exception, I cannot think of any way to enforce this within a non-violent society.

Amp:

I really see no way to enforce ANY property rights in a non-violent society without full cooperation from every individual, at all times.

I think there is a very good argument for treating "intellectual" property different than regular property. The outline of the argument is in the 2 principles I listed in my first post.

I forgot to mention earlier that I this post and I totally agree with the "working backwords" part. I first heard a quote like this in the context of sales, but I think it has a wide applicability: People make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them. I wouldn't axiomatize it () but I think it's so often true. C.f. my WW game.

I am referring to a society that isn't based on coercion, not one where violence is unknown. If you attempt to relieve me of my property, there will be violence.

Disproving "every human acts rationally" would require you to act rationally, finding a red plant does not require you to be a green plant.
I'd also be interested in how you want to observe action.

How so?

Correct. I'm not concerned with other methods except for ridiculing how little sense they make.

Once again, it's pretty hard to do it better than provably correct. I do not disagree with other methods because they disagree with my chosen method I disagree with them because the quality of knowledge they can provide is "guesswork".
And of course there's fundamental disagreements I have with "other economics" such as the idea of saying "I prefer cheese 0.35689 times to eggs" (c.p.) instead of merely saying "I prefer cheese over eggs" (c.p.)

What concept of punishment do you subscribe to?
How does a non violent society work (tl;dr version just to understand where you're coming from)?

Pretty interesting sidenote:
I browsed the Englisch wiki article on Philosophy of Science and it seems to be quite different from the German counterpart. It seems to presuppose that science=empirical

Suppose somebody comes up with a new form of Economics. Worth studying, or do you ridicule without looking at it?

Just because I'm acting rationally, doesn't mean that I can't prove that others are NOT acting rationally.

Obviously that was intentionally over the top. I'm constantly monitoring other theories, can't hurt to think about new/different ideas.

That's maybe true but how would you go about proving such a thing? (I feel I already know this will come down to "well what does rationally mean").
But then again how is someone other than yourself supposed to judge if you act rationally?

I have no idea how I would prove it, but I imagine that somebody with logic skills capable of forming an entire economic system from the ground up could determine if someone was acting rationally or not.

Some examples of common behaviours I would not consider rational:
Suicide
Speeding when you know there's cops around
Screwing around on a spouse
Unprotected casual sex with strangers

These things happen a lot. I don't think anyone could argue that they are rational decisions.

Well, for the commonly accepted meaning of the word. I suspect it can be twisted to mean "everything is rational, because it's a priori true". Hopefully that won't happen here...

These things are all examples of people having different value systems than you. By this line of argument, it would be irrational for someone to eat cauliflower because it doesn't taste good to you. You speed when cops are around because you value speed more than you fear reprisal. You screw around on your wife because you value sex more than you value reprisal. You kill yourself because you value release from pain more than you value living. Completely rational behavior.

If that's your definition of rational, then this conversation is pretty much impossible.

Yeah amp said it perfectly. Also note that most non-Austrian theories use the h0mo oeconomicus as a premise. (rofl WTF filter filters ****, guess you're screwed if you need to use lation expressions or want to discuss books such as H0mo Faber)
Note that Austrian economics is not concerned with why people act the way they do (why prefer cheese over milk) but leaves that to pychology.

tl;dr: For me economics is a theory of human action and not a theory of decision making.

Well with your definition of rational, how is anyone but the actor himself able to judge if he acts rationally?
I.e. whay gives you the right to say me having unprotected sex with strangers is irrational.

And that's why...