The fact that you use the term "crass self interest" to describe my tax complaint kind of proves the "selfish bastard" point I made here. Oddly, I seem to be paying a hell of a lot more than most people to live in exactly the same "advanced civilization" they do. I get nothing extra out of the deal that I don't pay for myself. It's not like I get a special fire truck, or get to drive in the diamond lane, or get the "good" cops when I call 911. What liberals try to do in these discussions is try to obscure the fact that what I'm really doing is paying the freight for a lot of other people, most of who run around bitching about the rich SOBs who are the cause of all our troubles.

Alan Greenspan used to be a Randite, but there it is.

Nobody has a greater respect for science than I do, and no doubt there are a number of scientific aspects of economics that are quite useful.

But before there was hard science, there was hard experience. It is useful to know about alkaloids and chemistry, but it is also useful to know that if you eat a certain mushroom you will swell up like a dead pig in the noonday sun and die.

I have never read Das Kapital, although I've plowed through excerpts. I've never read Mein Kampf. The experience of the past century and what these people said and did tells me all I need to know about these philosophies, and all the arguments about dialectics or other doubletalk aren't going to convince me otherwise.

It has not escaped my notice that some economists use economic science in the same way a grifter uses three walnut shells and a pea...an attempt to hide the fact that they plan on taking you to the cleaners.

That said, I obviously don't think ideology is useless, or I wouldn't harp about philosophy. There is ideology at the root of all economic systems. Capitalism is a consequence of a philosophy of individual freedom, just as socialism is a consequence of a philosophy of collectivism. If you discard philosophy completely, you end up at the mercy of whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Like et deciding between Nader and McCain.

An economy's prosperity is directly related to how free that economy is. This has been proven again and again.

Given that, I don't understand why I get so much grief for railing against collectivism and supporting individual freedom.