Truth has a ring to it. It rings true because truth is a part of nature. Mankind’s job is to identify the facts of reality. Things like gravity and centrifugal force, the tides, winds, and seasons are all very understandable because they are ostensible. You can point to them, and you can easily explain them.
It’s not so easy to explain abstractions or theories. And it’s especially not so easy to explain non-truths like rationalizations or outright falsifications. That’s hard. They do not have a ring of truth to them. You have to work to obscure the truth and come up with plausible explanations. It’s hard to falsify reality. Yet, such falsifications are accepted as truth all the time.
Take economics as an example. Economics is a science, but a social science filled with abstract theories and connections. But like natural law, you can point to the effects of various theories when put into practice. We have empirical evidence of what works and what doesn’t, therefore what’s true and what isn’t. We have fifty years of communism to point to in Cuba. And even more than that in the now defunct Soviet Union. We have thirty years of an Industrial Policy and protectionism to point to in Japan and the decades of stagnation that has resulted. We also have the decades of stagnation in the socialist countries of Europe. And simply look at the economies of North and South Korea for conclusive evidence of the two opposing economic theories.
The first great experiment with what became known as capitalism came from the writings of Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth Of Nations in 1776 and ushered in the Industrial Revolution in Europe and then America. It raised the standards of living of millions of people above and beyond anything dreamed of in the entire previous history of mankind. Two-hundred years of progress reigned like never before. The technological revolution that resulted from Reagonomics is a similar example of an undreamed-of burst of prosperity.
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