To qualify as science, an economic theory must satisfy following conditions:

All-inclusive (anamnetic) – It must encompass, integrate and incorporate all facts known. Coherent – It must be chronological, structured and causal. Consistent – Self-consistent (its sub-"narratives" cannot contradict one another or go against grain of main "narrative") and consistent with observed phenomena (both those related to subject and those pertaining to rest of universe). Logically compatible – It must not violate laws of logic both internally (the narrative must abide by some internally imposed logic) and externally (the Aristotelian logic which is applicable to observable macro world). Insightful – It must inspire a sense of awe and astonishment, which is result of seeing something familiar in a new light or result of seeing a pattern emerging out of a big body of data ("data mining"). The insights must be inevitable conclusion of logic, language and of development of narrative. Aesthetic – The narrative must be both plausible and "right", beautiful (aesthetic), not cumbersome, not awkward, not discontinuous, smooth and so on. Parsimonious – The narrative must employ minimum number of assumptions and entities in order to satisfy all above conditions. Explanatory – The narrative must explain behaviour of economic actors, their decisions, why events develop way they do. Predictive (prognostic) – The narrative must possess ability to predict future events, future behaviour of economic actors and of other meaningful figures and inner emotional and cognitive dynamics of said actors. Prescriptive – With power to induce change (whether it is for better, is a matter of contemporary value judgements and fashions). Imposing – The narrative must be regarded by society as preferable and guiding organizing principle. Elastic – The narrative must possess intrinsic abilities to self organize, reorganize, give room to emerging order, accommodate new data comfortably, avoid rigidity in its modes of reaction to attacks from within and from without. In some of these respects, current economic narratives are usually theories in disguise. But scientific theories must satisfy not only most of above conditions. They must also pass crucial hurdles of testability, verifiability, refutability, falsifiability, and repeatability – all failed by economic theories. Many economists argue that no experiments can be designed to test statements of economic narratives, to establish their truth-value and, thus, to convert them to theorems.

There are five reasons to account for this shortcoming - inability to test hypotheses in economics:

Entrepreneurs recombine natural and human resources in novel ways. They do so to respond to forecasts of future needs, or to observations of failures and shortcomings of current products or services. Entrepreneurs are professional - though usually intuitive - futurologists. This is a valuable service and it is financed by systematic risk takers, such as venture capitalists. Surely they all deserve compensation for their efforts and hazards they assume?

Exclusive ownership is most ancient type of such remuneration. First movers, entrepreneurs, risk takers, owners of wealth they generated, exploiters of resources - are allowed to exclude others from owning or exploiting same things. Mineral concessions, patents, copyright, trademarks - are all forms of monopoly ownership. What moral right to exclude others is gained from being first?

Nozick advanced Locke's Proviso. An exclusive ownership of property is just only if "enough and as good is left in common for others". If it does not worsen other people's lot, exclusivity is morally permissible. It can be argued, though, that all modes of exclusive ownership aggravate other people's situation. As far as everyone, bar entrepreneur, are concerned, exclusivity also prevents a more advantageous distribution of income and wealth.

Exclusive ownership reflects real-life irreversibility. A first mover has advantage of excess information and of irreversibly invested work, time, and effort. Economic enterprise is subject to information asymmetry: we know nothing about future and everything about past. This asymmetry is known as "investment risk". Society compensates entrepreneur with one type of asymmetry - exclusive ownership - for assuming another, investment risk.