I find it interesting that many economists tend to ignore the limits of their own theories. For example, the dogma that markets tend toward efficiency. This i

I find it interesting that many economists tend to ignore the limits of their own theories. For example, the dogma that markets tend toward efficiency. This is true -- as long as certain axioms are not violated. But they seem to forget about the axioms on which their conclusions are built and march forward as if their conclusions are absolutely true and apply that assumption to problems where they simply do not hold because the axioms on which they are built are violated. To continue with the 'markets tend toward efficiency' conclusion: it does not hold when there are negative expectations for a party for not making a transaction. And they invented a fudge factor to get around this a bit (that still doesn't work for all cases) which is to make sure the equations when taken in aggregate do not generally lead to negative expectations for not making a transaction. This holds in many more cases but still not all. Where does it fail and why does it matter? Well, the axioms underlying the 'markets tend toward efficiency' work great in capital markets. They tend to completely fail when pain or death is potentially involved in a transaction (severe negative expectations) but they may look like they should work and you can find limited cases that do work. So, basically war or crime or relationships or corruption or or poverty or healthcare or any other of those human interactions pain or death tend to come into play. A huge swath of sectors where politicians and special interests and the economists that inform them try to craft policy to fit a misapplied theory. Yet, economists march on pretending the theory holds from the axioms to the conclusions and on to the further conclusions built on those hold because 'mathematics' -- who can argue with mathematics?