Why “Freakonomics” Failed to Transform Economics
24th July 2025
The Economist, a Voice of the Crust.
“Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So starts Alfred Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”, a 19th-century textbook that helped create the common language economists still use today. Marshall’s contention that economics studies the “ordinary” was not a dig, but a statement of intent. The discipline was to take seriously some of the most urgent questions in human life. How do I pay my bills? What do I do for a living? What happens if I get sick? Will I ever be able to retire?
The fundamental error of the so-called ‘science’ of economics is precisely this. In fact, economics is not about ‘the ordinary business of life’ except insofar as that involves trade, which almost every aspect of modern life does. Economics is about trade, nothing else. It is about production only insofar as that produces goods to be used in trade, which almost every aspect of modern life does. How do I pay my bills? Typically, from the money you receive in trade for your labor. What do I do for a living? Trade my labor for resources. What happens if I get sick? You can’t trade your money for resources, so you’re screwed––unless you get passive income from investments or rents, in which case you’re golden. Will I ever be able to retire? Sure, if you put enough away to generate passive income … or someone else is obliged to pay you some sort of pension. Every ‘economist’ in history has made this mistake, which is why economists stick their noses into every other aspect of ordinary life without any justification.
Like the judicial sophistry that enables conscription in violation of the 13th Amendment and the judicial sophistry that allows birthright citizenship in violation of the 14th Amendment, the Federal government is perfmitted to stick its nose into ‘the ordinary business of life’ in violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution by the judicial sophistry that, well, if you weren’t doing your ‘economic’ activity within the border of a single state, you would be ‘engaging in interstate commerce’ and so you get the Federal boot on your neck.