> John Medaille wrote:  
>>  
>>  
>> The "air pressure" of economics is the degree of monopoly, monopsony,   
>> oligarchy, collusion, regulation, corruption and frictional elements,   
>> not to mention the starting point of the distributions of property   
>> and  education, and the institutional, cultural, and psychological   
>> elements of an individual trade or of a whole economy. Discussing   
>> economics without regard to the political economy is like designing   
>> planes by pure physics without regard to air pressure. The abstract   
>> theory may be elegant indeed, but the economy will fail to fly or   
>> crash regularly if we have no measure of "economic air pressure."   
>> That's how we get flat earth theories of comparative advantages in   
>> the face of chronic and seemingly intractable trade imbalances.   
  
Remind me again what such uninformed essentialist proclamations about   
the true nature of physics, and the true nature of economics, have to do   
with the History of Economics?  
  
E. Roy Weintraub