Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence contains a chapter titled The Modes of Capitalism which is full of revelations which Mr. Greenspan unfortunately failes to recognize. The chapter describes the various forms Capitalism has taken in a number of countries, mostly North American and European. Of course, economists shun the word sect, preferring instead the euphemism school in an attempt to gloss over the non-scientific nature of economics.
Mr. Greenspan’s modes of Capitalism are nothing more than sects, and no endeavor that is comprised of sects is a science.

Mr. Greenspan’s attempts to explain the existence of these sects begins to reveal just how unscientific economists can be. Mr. Greenspan ranks “the United States as the most ‘free’ of the larger economies” and believes, apparently, that therefore, Americans are less risk averse than people elsewhere. It may be, for instance, that Americans support this freer economic system because they are poorly educated and therefore more gullible than people in countries that have better educational systems.

There is no question that the American educational system is inferior to the educational systems in many other countries. The will-publicized country-by-country comparisons that invariably show that American students are less competent in many areas of study need not be repeated. When graduates of some of America’s most prestigious universities, such as the current crop of presidential candidates, can openly reject evolution and when various branches of the national government routinely rewrite scientific studies to make them conform to the administration’s political ideology, the failure of the American educational system becomes evident. In America, ideology trumps truth. » Read more: Science, Ideology, and Economics