Similarities between Medicine and Economics

The deficiencies of modern medicine can be highlighted through a comparison between medicine and economics.  Economics is “the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services” according to Wikipedia.  I will call this abstract economics.  Although economics is theoretically just “a study of the facts,” in reality it advocates that certain measures be taken to make things “better.”  I will use “applied economics” to mean the study of all commercial interactions within a set of people such as a country and the development of recommendations based upon the conclusions drawn.

Medicine is defined as “the art and science of healing” by Wikipedia.  Assumed in this definition is that the object being studied is the body—in our case the human body.  Not mentioned is that the approach to healing taken by a medical practitioner depends upon their philosophy about the how the body operates.  I would make a case that there could be two definitions of medicine.  One is “abstract medicine” which tries to understand how the body works and the other is “applied medicine” which develops strategies to heal disease and promote health.  These correspond to abstract economics and applied economics.

Medicine and economics are two very parallel fields.  Medicine studies the interactions between organs in the body and their interaction with the outside world.  Economics studies the transactions between members of a group and their trade with people outside the selected group.  I believe that the predominant schools of thought in both medicine and economics are similarly constructed and flawed in the same way.

The predominant theory in economics is Keynesianism.  It is based upon the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and proposes that the government can grow and stabilize the economy by controlling the currency.  This is what was taught in your high school or college economics class.  The method through which the government stimulates and reigns in the economy goes beyond the scope of this discussion, but the key point is that the government is given responsibility for regulating the economy and uses instruments of coercion such as taxation and the manipulation of interest rates to accomplish this goal.  Decisions are made by central planners and usually imposed through collection agencies and a central bank.  In the United States this includes tax collection agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the central bank known as the Federal Reserve.

There are many schools of economic thought besides Keynesianism such as Marxism and the Chicago School; however, all of them but one share the same basic presuppositions.  The lone dissenter is the Austrian School of economics.  Austrian Economics gained publicity recently when Ron Paul, an advocate of Austrian economics, ran for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2008.  Austrian economics uses a much different form of analysis than the other schools because it believes that economic theory can only be properly derived from looking at individual action or “strict methodological individualism.”  Because it holds this viewpoint, the Austrian school is the only economic model to eschew statistical and mathematical modeling.

Austrian economists have concluded that the economy is too complex to understand or manage leading them to become the first opponents of communism.  Presently Austrian economists are the only ones who consistently advocate decreasing government size and regulation.  The Austrian school of economics believes that driving forces behind prosperity are entrepreneurship, private property, and voluntary exchange.  Their conclusions can be summarized in the famous phrase “the government is best which governs least” because government activity always involves coercion which by definition infringes on property rights and voluntary exchange.  Most of the Austrian school economists’ efforts are directed towards pointing out the opportunity costs and unintended consequences of government action.  Today Austrian economists are the pariahs of the economic community, so they do not receive professorships at Universities nor have their recommendations implemented by the government monetary policy.

In short, Austrian economics is the economics of liberty and personal freedom.  It favors decentralization and allowing problems to heal themselves naturally.  Although it is rarely followed by those in power, its predictions are regularly come true.  Keynesianism is the school of slavery and central command.  It wants to have the “smart” people who have tamed the economy using computer models rule the “common masses.”  It wants central planners to force people to spend their money and direct capitol to the areas where they think it is most needed.

Modern medicine has made many of the same errors as Keynesianism.  To begin with modern medicine oversimplifies the body.  This is exemplified by the “nutritional facts” on food packaging.  These labels show the results of a series of tests conducted on the food.  A study or series of studies are used show a supposed correlation between the results of these test and some disease or health indicator.  Food manufacturers will do whatever it takes to make their foods have more desirable numbers printed on the side of the box.  The desired result is always brought through additional processing or artificial additives.  These processing techniques are akin to the crude bumbling of the government at the wheel of the economy.  In the end it is a very tenuous chain of reasoning connecting health food and health science to healthiness.

A second error is of modern medicine is its attempt to solve all medical problems by applying foreign objects to the body.  In the same way that the government–a nonproductive member of society–forces everyone through hoops in an attempt to grow the economy, the doctor prescribes foreign chemicals to be placed inside the body.  The doctor’s goal is to manhandle symptoms into remission or if that fails go into the body himself with a knife and cut out rebellious organs.  The idea that the healer is interfering too much and making matters worse occurs to neither the doctor nor the government bureaucrat.

Happily for us there is a parallel to the Austrian School of thought.  Dr. Weston Price did not use the typical scientific approach to medicine and instead observed the habits of the healthiest people he could find.  These people turned out to be indigenous people whose living was based upon traditions based down from generation to generation and who had very little interaction with sophisticated western doctors and medical theories.  Dr. Price found these people to be physically strong, morally upright, and highly intelligent.  These people had not used science to determine their lifestyle.