The lack of settled science in economics doesn’t undermine its status as a science. Classical economics clearly distinguished factors of production—land, labor, and capital—and their returns (rent, wages, interest). Yet, special interests have used neoclassical economics to conflate ‘land’ and ‘capital’ to obscure the proper distribution of wealth, and to maintain their rogue rent seeking mechanism.

As large-scale political questions are usually founded in the science of economics, this confusion has fuelled political debate. Macaulay’s quip about gravity not being accepted had it badly affected the powerful, highlights how financial interests have been able to distort economic truths. Vested interests thrive on muddled thinking, perpetuating economic policies that favour them over the general public.

Although cooperation of the public has driven human progress and shaped the body politic, times such as these have seen self-interest and greed arise that develop a retrogression eroding reason and integration. Society becomes fractured because economic rents have been unduly privatised.

Rent nevertheless remains the glue to bind this increasingly vast social fracture.

That’s a lonely proposition!

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