Ah yeah, thanks for the response and discussion. Your final sentence, yeah, conjecture & hypothesizing w/o data can only get you so far. I was honestly on that rationalist train for a while and it still bleeds through with fantastical imaginary models. Need to touch grass every so often (i.e. deal with real world data).

I'm always super astonished though how some people, like Popper, Hayek, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Marx/Engels; managed to have such elaborate and interesting models and conceptions without the kind of like data available now. I put in Hayek and Popper, they really were off the mark on some spots I think (I'm trying to go through their work to see what libs/neocons like about it, whatever they self-report on what they like is really not helpful and a bit incomprehensible to me) and it really seems, as a consequence of their material conditions & environment, what these economists/thinkers thought actually did make sense from their POV. It really wracks my brain.