Reply #158: I was not aware that we were discussing the Irish Potato Famine(s). The [View All]

[coalition_unwilling]

supply and demand curves I referenced in my initial post derive from the field of microeconomics. The Irish potato blight and resultant suffering and death seem to me more a function of macroeconomics (how a given national economy works or fails in the aggregate), and not so much because of any weakness in classical economic theory at the microeconomic level. (The moment you said that 'potatoes were not much in commerce,' you were as much as suggesting that classical economic theory with its abstract supply and demand curves would not be a useful tool for understanding, much less solving, such a colossal societal failure. Seems like only poets and satirists like Jonathan Swift understood at the time what was really going on.)

Still your post underlines how absolutely vital it is that abstract economic theory constantly be tested against empirical reality. Any time a hypothesis fails the test of empirical reality, that hypothesis should be revised or its premises closely examined and altered or adjusted.