Don't Push Buttons

The great misconception of modern economics is that it is the study of how to manipulate an economy, be it micro or macro, local, national, or worldwide. When this happens, push this button. When this happens, pull this lever.

While it is true that pulling the lever changes the economy in some way, the misconception is that the outcome is predictable. The economy is not a system. It is a living entity. Because it is a sum of individual motives, desires, and personalities or all its participants, we can understand it only as far as we can fully understand each individual.

“The man of system... is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is
often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to
the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He
seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society
with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a
chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a
principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the
legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and
act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and
harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are
opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at
all times in the highest degree of disorder.” -- Adam Smith, Theory of Moral
Sentiments

Once we have fully mastered psychology and neural science in such a way that we can perfectly predict the actions and reactions of all individuals, and can sum all actions and reactions together in a way that we can accurately predict the reactions to others’ reactions, and we can factor in a perfect understanding of nature and all disasters that will come about in the future, including accidents… In other words, once we are God, then will we be able to accurately push buttons and pull levers to manipulate the economy correctly.

Until then economics is and must be simply the study of the economy.