"In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion." (B. Stigum)
"There cannot be both opinion and knowledge of the same thing at the same time." (Aristotle)
"We are not yet out of the wood; in fact, we are not yet in it." (J. Schumpeter)
"The time has come to speak of fundamental things." (J. Åkerman)
"Scrap the lot and start again." (Joan Robinson)
Knowledge only – no opinion. (AXEC)
In economics, almost everything and the exact opposite has already been said sometime, somewhere, by somebody. There is an abundance of opinion and a dearth of knowledge. To make sense of the history of economic thought requires to select the true propositions and to put them in the right order. True and right refer to the set of structural axioms. "A look at the history of economic thought may help to identify what went wrong in the beginning." (F. Ackerman). The key fact is:
The profit theory is false since Adam Smith.
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