“I have made it abundantly clear that economics is about human activity”
No, you are trying to establish that there are certain economic “Laws” that are independent of deliberate actions by major players in the marketplace.”

Yes there is a law of supply and demand that governs the natural world, but as it relates to humans, demand is about human wants and needs. It is about behavior. Supply is about resources, scarcity and human desire to self improve their situation. In other words, human economic activity is governed by S&D.

“Economists will almost universally agree that, for instance, raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment for low wage workers”
Rubbish. If that were true, re-instituting slavery (the ultimate lowering of the minimum wage) will create plenty of jobs for low wage workers.

Is there no cost to slavery? Housing and feeding someone their entire life is quite an expense vs paying someone a shit wage and having them fend for themselves. This is a silly argument that you threw out without much thought. But slavery is thankful illegal so it is irrelevant. Again, 99% of economists will agree that raising wages will increase unemployment at the margins. There are plenty of non economists who will deny it, just look in the mirror.

“you are mixing up values with economic theory.”
Au contraire, I am saying economics SHOULD be about values, that it should be used to make lives better for the entire community, not as an excuse to let Capitalists do any damn thing they please.

Economists are humans and humans have values. Again, disagreements between different schools of economics ARE ABOUT VALUES, about how to change, or not change, the results of economic forces they all agree exist.

“Different economists DO NOT disagree on whether SandD exists.”
I never said SandD does not exist,

You absolutely said a number times the S&D did not exist, was not relevant, etc etc.

what I said is that SandD is used as an excuse to manipulate the market and get capitalists off the hook for it by claiming economic crimes are an inevitable consequence of scientific law.

Yes and gravity is an excuse to crash airplanes. Some may use S&D as an excuse to argue against big government and regulations, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valuable subject to learn about and understand.

“RobVG’s comment”
Actually, Rob’s comment was about something else entirely,
What’s the big deal about rate hikes? by RobVG December 14, 2022 4:29 pm
It was my comment on Rob’s post that provoked your outburst. And by the way, you still left Rob’s question unanswered, and my response (about financing expansion by borrowing), unchallenged.

So what if business expansion is done through borrowing? They pay it back with interest. When a company borrows money to expand a plant they create jobs as well as profits. Those newly hired people then have money to go spend at other businesses, who then hire more employees to meet the increased demand. This is an age old concept that you somehow think is evil?

“the entire global business community is based on evil greed and seeks to enrich itself by enslaving and stealing from the world.”
Yep, that’s my world view, all right. That’s why I’m so quick to notice when I hear people making excuses for the bastards, and especially when they try to pass off those excuses as “Science”. Besides, isn’t that what Adam Smith said? That everybody is in it to promote their own self-interest. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Karl Marx said too, although he called it “class struggle”.

And Adam Smith marveled at how people acting in their own self interest created good for society. That really was his great revelation. An age old concept that he articulated so well. Jeff Bezos has created millions of jobs simply because he wanted to enrich himself. Elon Musk, a real prick imo, has advanced the electric car industry, helped open up space and may someday send humans to Mars in large part because he is a greedy bastard. Look at every business on all the stock indexes. They all exist because of the self interest of people who started and own them. They create employment for people and investment opportunities that better the lives of hundreds of millions of people, as well as provide goods or services that people want or need. Sure there are the Bernie Madoffs. Sure there's negative externalities like pollution. That's where government is needed. Government, people, people with values, come in to change the outcomes with laws and regulations.

Go ahead and have the last word. I'm done slamming my head against a brick wall. See you over on the space science board.