HI Zen,

Thanks. I, like many of us in the hard sciences, have argued that economics and all social sciences are not real sciences. I got berated for this several times, but I have now traced the philosophical origins of all major schools of economics and they are not based on the philosophy of science. I suspect the same is true for all social sciences.

I am laying out a science of economics that answers many of Rand's criticisms of economic science. (I talk about this explicitly in my Atlas Summit talk, but not in my book Source of Economic Growth). I think economics can be linked to biology, evolution, and to some extent entropy. I do not define economics as a social science and I show that "Robinson Crusoe" was engaged in economic activities and therefore Robinson Crusoe economics is valid. I intend to lay out more of my ideas in blog posts and eventually compare my "Intellectual Capitalism" to many of the main ideas in economics. Note however that no schools of economics take the human mind and technological change into account, so they don't even deal with the most important issues in economics.

After reading Rand in college I tried to read some Austrians including Mises. Like you, I found all of them dull and not at all like Rand, despite saying they were for free markets. When one article started discussing the Protestant work ethic, I quit reading them.

Unfortunately, they came back into my life in a big way when they started attacking the patent system. I noticed other problems in their reasoning and I have spent probably 6-8 years studying and arguing with the Austrians. Eventually, I realized that there must be some deeper philosophical issues to the Austrians that causes them to make these mistakes and ignore the empirical evidence.

It is really not my goal to spend time tearing down other schools of economics. My goal is to put forward my ideas. Unfortunately too many objectivists and too many so-called free market organizations (Cato, Reason, Wall Street Journal editorial board) have been infected by this Austrian pseudo-science. In my opinion, we will not make progress toward free markets in politics until we can put forward a school of economics that is based on reason and science.

Thank you. Unfortunately, anyone I would recommend would be a mixed bag or be very focused on a narrow topic. Perhaps the best book that is readable that is on related topic is William Rosen's "The Most Powerful Idea in the World." http://www.amazon.com/Most-Powerful-I....

BTW: I would really appreciate a review on Amazon if you have the time.