John Womack asked: "Could this [careerism] be one explanation for economists believing only in "the history of success"? Not the production and diffusion of knowledge, but promotions, grants, appointments, contracts, awards?" Please pardon me for attempting an answer. It may be useful to distinguish between production and application of knowledge. John made a good observation on the sociology of science. Yes, by and large, most people in professions do have the primary focus on career advancement through application of existing knowledge. A core set of doctrines is shared, and the peers do expect one to show a basic *success* with learning (and applying) that knowledge-base. As such, nothing is wrong with this picture. Very few people are able to undertake production of (new) knowledge, while most are able to master what has been doctored by the very few others. Indeed, I have doubts even about mastering. My comments pertain to the *failure to master* existing knowledge. Let us consider Richard Whately and Lionel Robbins concerning the definition of economics to see what has happened. In 1832, Whately announced that economics is a science of exchange. A century later, Robbins announced that economics is a science of allocation. I call them masters rather than doctors because they did not produce very much in original knowledge, but they did well in mastering and systematizing existing knowledge produced by others. They did not produce new doctrines, but communicated what others proposed. Now, Whately had a more profound understanding of the character of economics, which he saw as a study of the economy pervaded by the phenomenon of exchange. A natural subsistence economy without exchange is indeed an ecology, and well within the grasp of the biologist whose application of the principle of conservation of energy transmutes into the principle of economizing. That is, one need know nothing about economics as such to study the optimization by the mouse nibbling at various alternative sources of nutrition. The study of the principle of economizing is not distinctly economics. Why, a biologist can do it very well without ever uttering the words market, profit, price, demand, supply, money and so on. A mouse produces and consumes, but does not buy and sell. A mouse optimizes but never acts as an entrepreneur, whose job is to create new value out of nothing, by turning something of low value into something of high value. This last part is possible through and only through trade in a market, in which things of lower value are transferred from the current owner to somebody else who puts a higher value on it, when measured against some reference good as payment. Ludwig von Mises mastered the exchange issue well, far beyond the reaches of Robbins. So what success did we have? The science of exchange degenerated into a study of allocation. In this degeneration, people confused price with output, output with value, and value with income. This confusion led to a splitting of economics into incompatible parts known as microeconomics (which says that equality of demand and supply determines price) and macroeconomics (which says that equality of demand and supply determines output). How can one claim to have mastered the subject if one cannot see that a sentence such as "supply creates its own demand" makes no sense except when supply is to mean "the value of what is supplied" and demand is to mean "the value of what is demanded" whereas supply should simply mean "quantity supplied" and demand should mean "quantity demanded"? Dear John, we have a long way to go. The *production* of new knowledge is the job of exceptional people who make history, rather than the job of ordinary people who merely study history made by others and inherit the endowment created by the true doctors. We do not even seem to know how to apply the most basic ideas. For example, the idea that there is a choice between studying history of economics versus say econometrics seems to me to be entirely misplaced. It is like supposing that one has a choice between having legs and having shoes. Nobody can become an economist of any ability without studying at least the broad outlines of the history of ideas, to see how the same ideas may have many different connotations. So here is a historical question to econometricians. When you apply econometric procedures, how do you define demand, supply, and price, and then how do you interpret the statement "supply creates its own demand"? Here is the same question more elaborately. If demand for x is denoted by Xd, and stands for the quantity of x which the buyer is able and willing to buy at a given price Px, and when Xs denotes supply being the quantity of x the seller is able and willing to sell at a given price Px, what did econometricians of the past mean when Xd=Xs? Did it mean that the output was determined, or did it mean that the price of x, which is the quantity of y which pays for x (per unit of x), was determined? Who was the great econometrician who understood the difference between output and price? Please name one. And then what did the great econometricians do to interpret Say's Law? It is clear that the when John supplies a certain quantity Xs, he hopes to get the value Px*Xs as revenue, which he intends to spend to buy some other good Yd from Paul at price Py. In this sense, the value of supply of x given by (Px*Xs) is equal to the value of demand for y given by (Py*Yd). It does not and could not mean that the supplier was himself the buyer, or that the supply of x created the demand for x? One could say that the supply of x of a given value created demand for y of the same value. Now, who was the econometrician who could apply this simple idea? Please name one. Mohammad Gani