What ita said.

Economies are not imaginary. An economy will always exist when there is competition over access to limited resources. An anthill has an economy, even though individual ants don't possess much of an imagination.

If our existing money-based economy gets replaced with one based on the blunt-force application of sticks and rocks, it doesn't mean that one is more real than the other.

Next week's Excel spreadsheets are most definitely imaginary.

My personal experience contradicts your assertion!

Just a small town girl...

Just a small town girl...

I can sense my put increasing in value already.

I think you read me to be disagreeing with you when I was responding to Sean.

Well, I'm mostly agreeing with Sean, but that's not it. I have seen reactions to ideas where the ideas don't seem to have been posted. That's why I keep saying "I don't know who said that" and why I ask who did. Not just because I didn't say it.

If no one trades, there is no economy, right? Or is the null economy still considered one? I mean, if I create most of what I need and steal the rest (assuming the actual existence of other people doing the same, because the economy that is null because there are

The fact that the value of something changes /= disappearance of a whole economy /= the scientific status of economics.

I don't think I was explicitly asserting any of those things. I don't think changes in value, even drastic ones automatically cause an economy to disappear, but they do sometimes disappear. To the point of damaging the ability to trade effectively on many different levels. And I recognize that there are different levels of economic activity, in fact one of my points is that sometimes an entire level can be crippled or destroyed for a time. I don't believe I ever asserted that all economic activity can vanish with a thought, just that the amount of trust and consesnual reality involved in economic activity seems greater and to have a more significant impact than in other areas of human endeavor that involve high degrees of trust and/or consensual reality.

And I don't see where any of that implies that I think there cannot be scientific measurement, study or understanding of economics on any level.

The economy is an aspect of a society, just as economics basically has the same goals as sociology. Whenever two people interact, there is a type of economy.

Maybe it's just me, but it sounds like everyone is pretty much saying the same things and it's just a battle of semantics.

economics basically has the same goals as sociology

What are these goals?

Whenever two people interact, there is a type of economy.

So the null economy (defined by me as nothing being exchanged) still counts.