BONUS EPISODE: Economic Law #11 | Hn 262

**Adam Haman** (0:07)
Hello, welcome to Haman Nature, I am Adam Haman. Joined as always by my spiky buddy Tyrone, the porcupine hobo. How are you? Good, sir?

**Tyrone** (0:16)
I'm well.

**Adam Haman** (0:17)
I'm well.

**Tyrone** (0:18)
I feel like I'm getting smarter with each of these bonus episodes.

**Adam Haman** (0:24)
I am smarter as well. We're working our way through the second half of Hunter Lewis's great little book, Economics In Three Lessons. We're doing the 100 Economic Laws. We're doing them as bonus episodes for you good folks who support this show that we all love to do. So thank you for helping us do that.

**Tyrone** (0:43)
Yes, you could get your own copy of this book and read them yourself. Why would you want to do that?

**Adam Haman** (0:49)
Why would you ever even think about doing that? You'd probably like learn more, but it wouldn't be as fun.
Yeah.

**Tyrone** (0:56)
It would be silly. Yeah. Don't you rather watch us two idiots fumble through these things, not understand, pronounce words properly?

**Adam Haman** (1:04)
And mispronouncing probabilistic? Hey. All right. Well, we are on law number 11 on this here episode. And law number 11 is Corollary J of the Law of Analytic Laws, Corruption. Subtitle, if we rely on laws, physical or social, there will be attempts to corrupt and misuse them. And then he just says no shit and closes up.
That's not true. That's not true, folks. All right. Let's dive right in. This is a short law, but it's not that short. Experimental science, together with its chief tool, experimental method and economic law, together with its chief tool, economic calculation, are arguably the greatest achievements of modern civilization. Although the latter is too often taken for granted or denigrated. Both are constructions of the human mind and are therefore vulnerable to the dishonesty and corruption that plague human life. Look at you, politicians. As previously mentioned, laboratory scientists may cheat on their results or sell out to special interests in exchange for grants.
Economists may be more interested in power, wealth, or just an easier life than in seeking out or sharing the truth. This is a reality too.
In other instances, it is not the experts, but ordinary people who may hammer away at the foundations of experimental science or economic law precisely because they find those disciplines inconvenient. For example, the 2016 students at Cape Town University staged a protest claiming that science is inherently racist, which by definition it cannot be if it is truly science. The students call themselves fallists with the hashtag, quote, science must fall.
This does not appear to be merely adolescent fun, but rather a genuine failure to grasp that the law of gravity has no logical connection to social justice. You know, Tyrone and I were just remarking off camera, ladies and gentlemen, that almost by definition, if Hunter Lewis was going to have 100 economic laws, it's a nice round number. You suspect he might have had to add a few. I wouldn't say filler, but as filler. This might have been one of them.

**Tyrone** (3:45)
Well, let me just ask an opening question. Since you stated this section was short but not too short, therefore does it have negative shortness?

**Adam Haman** (4:01)
It is a quantity of shortness of two. It is too short.

**Tyrone** (4:06)
Yeah, I don't know if there's much to say about this one.

**Adam Haman** (4:09)
You're saying that economic laws and actual laws are fall prey to human corruption, especially when we use the political means rather than the economic, yeah, no kidding.

**Tyrone** (4:21)
So I'm definitely going to be a fallist.

**Adam Haman** (4:25)
I hadn't heard that term before.

**Tyrone** (4:28)
Especially with the modern state of science and things like that, like, yeah.
A lot of it could just be junked out the window.
I think much of our academic pursuits have become corrupted by...

**Adam Haman** (4:46)
Well, that's for sure.

**Tyrone** (4:47)
Yeah. By political influence, by government funding.

**Adam Haman** (4:53)
If only that's what those kids meant. I just don't think that's what they meant.

**Tyrone** (4:56)
Oh, what do you think they meant?

**Adam Haman** (4:59)
That the pursuit of knowledge is inherently racist. I still find PhDs written on that subject in the human cesspool we call social sciences in modern academia.

**Tyrone** (5:11)
Yeah. I mean, this is definitely a reversion to the primitive, right? Where people don't want to be told what the truth is or what things are, they want to feel it or they want to come to it by...

**Adam Haman** (5:30)
They want to make that too.

**Tyrone** (5:30)
revelation or they want to make their own truth, you know, you hear it.