----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Monaco" <monacojerry at gmail.com>
JM: Agreed that the use of the model "says nothing" about cause. (Did I ever say it did?)
I don't agree that use of the model is an attempt to find "the invisible hand of one facet of human history." Some people who use such mathematical models may make such claims, but I don't know we should accept those claims, without further facts and arguments. The ideological claims made by some people who use mathematical models should be judged with high-level of skepticism.
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Well, look at the abstract again:
Economists who yearn for the redistribution of wealth in an ideal society are up against history. According to a recent study, the uneven distribution of wealth in a society appears to be a universal law that holds true for economies in many different societies, from ancient Egypt to modern Japan and the U.S. This distribution may reflect a simple natural law analogous to a 100-year-old theory describing the distribution of energy in a gas.
............So, take your own advice. If the above isn't a poor attempt to cloak a deterministic approach to investigating historico-economic processes, along with the implied claim that the invisible hand is more powerful than individual/collective agents, I don't know what is.