It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
