Economists and demagogue politicians are, though they’re of course not expressing it like that.

I mean it’s certainly hyperbole for the sake of the meme, but remember folks arguing things like Supply and Demand curves and derivatives are absolute and foundational to all resource management. Rather than shaky models built on questionable axioms. I don’t think many will argue that literally law like the speed of light, but the passive assumption is that they are so fundamentally and ubiquitously true that they are treated as though they are natural law.

A simple example I remember is the tragedy of the commons. Originally posited as an argument that land cannot be properly managed collectively because the marginal cost of one farmer over populating a pasture is less than their individual benefit, even if overall productivity of the pasture is lower. Naturally economists argued private ownership was the optimal solution, as they would get 100% of the benifits of the pasture, so the marginal costs would match the losses.

The core of the tragedy was then analyzed by an economist Elinor Ostrom who won a nobel prize for work in showing how common property can be successfully managed. Put dismissively simply, the ‘rational actors’ posed by economic thought didn’t account for the reality that people can and will work together and govern themselves.

Stupid people think all kinds of stupid things