I find it interesting that many economists tend to ignore the limits of their own theories.<p>For example, the dogma that markets tend toward efficiency.<p>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 <i>absolutely</i> true and apply that assumption to problems where they simply do not hold because the axioms on which they are built are violated.<p>To continue with the &#x27;markets tend toward efficiency&#x27; conclusion:  it does not hold when there are negative expectations for a party for <i>not</i> making a transaction.  And they invented a fudge factor to get around this a bit (that still doesn&#x27;t work for all cases) which is to make sure the equations when taken in aggregate do not <i>generally</i> lead to negative expectations for not making a transaction.  This holds in many more cases but still not all.<p>Where does it fail and why does it matter?  Well, the axioms underlying the &#x27;markets tend toward efficiency&#x27; 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 <i>should</i> work and you can find limited cases that <i>do</i> 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 &#x27;mathematics&#x27;  -- who can argue with mathematics?