Over the past half decade, there has been a growing trend signaling a shift in the perceived and accepted role of science.

Critics of praxeology often claim that it is isn’t really one of the sciences. It isn’t about the empirical world but is mere idle play with words. In this week’s column, I’d like to look at some remarks that the philosopher and linguistics scholar Jerrold Katz makes about rationalism and empiricism in his important and controversial book Language and Other Abstract Objects (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981) which praxeologists can use. The book isn’t much read these days, as it defends a thesis that hasn’t gotten much traction.

The government and the mainstream media’s favorite economic statistic is gross domestic product (GDP). If GDP goes up, then the economy is doing well. If GDP shrinks, then the economy is doing poorly, or so it is assumed. It all seems so simple. But GDP tells us no such thing. The economy may be doing poorly when GDP rises. Likewise, the economy may be doing well when GDP falls. How can this be?

Government economic policy is completely backwards. We are told that massive deficit spending, interest rates driven to zero, and now higher taxes on the “rich” will bring the American economy out of the doldrums or whatever fake malady seems to be popular. It is hard to imagine an economy in the doldrums when unemployment, the scourge of mankind for decades, is so low that businesses cannot attract enough workers. That’s number one; i.e., is the US economy really so bad?

Government officials at all levels—federal, state, and local—feel impelled to adopt some sort of pandemic policy, from outright lockdowns to mandates for wearing masks under certain circumstances. It all seems quite arbitrary, because it is! I contend that defending natural human rights and using logic can guide us to adopting a proper pandemic policy, even if that policy is to do nothing at all.