Business interests and interest groups are not entirely upper class
Hence the phrase "proxy organizations". Furthermore, the article explictly states:
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
If the average citizen isn't a member of the upper class, and according to the study the average citizen doesn't have little to no independent influence, then my statement is categorically demonstrated.
it does not show that popular vote is meaningless
Ugh, quote me where I said the popular vote was meaningless.
Lol - the FBI is not part of the military.
The FBI wasn't the only agency that contacted these people.
You are missing the key difference
No, you are missing the painfully obvious fact that I was making an analogy, not literally arguing that the government's use of psychics is equal in scope and significance to its use of economics. The point was to demonstrate why an appeal to authority is a bad basis for your argument but apparently you rather spend several posts talking about psychics rather than admit that is true.
I really don't.
I glad you can admit it - maybe you'll appreciate the absurdness of saying a stance you don't even know is wrong.
Yes, in that it has the sufficient grasp required to produce useful policy,
Which was never in question and what I literally said several posts ago.
No, billions of people live their lives according to however they want to. Economics doesn't seek to provide validation for people's individual behavior, so this isn't troublesome.
I am dying of laughter here. Economics is valid because it impacts government policy, which in turn produces changes to the world but it is wrong to say that people are impacted by economic theory.
Sorry but no. Economics doesn't need to be explicitly about validating people's viewpoints for its implicit utility and social value to be that function. But since that was the original point which has completely gone over your head, I guess its fruitless to state that anymore.
Economists are regularly employed in huge numbers for disparate research and analysis purposes only in my own mind? Sure, believe what you like.
No, there are obvious incentives for bad faith in the example provided. Had you an ounce of intellectual honesty you would have realized that was the point I was stating in the section you quoted.
Yep, we're done here.