I don't fully understand where you're coming from, so I'll eagerly await your next post.
>>Because the neoclassical model assumes people are rational consumption
>>maximizers, but of course people are social animals and crave social
>>interaction and approval, and this conflicts with the neoclassical
>>assumption.
>
>sorry to overpost--and i'm not going to be around much longer anyway so
>chill and i'll be outta everyone's hair soon enough-- but i just had to
>jump on this one: read adam smith. he said the same dang thing. i think
>it all quite "classical" bourg economics to think this way. i'll post more
>later b/c some of this ties into civil society and the binary opposition of
>state/market, individual/society an' all that. [and do note that i did say
>the economy operated according to a "moral logic" so i don't mean
>self-interest in quite the way you think. but here's a thought to chew on:
>
>"To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy,
>complacency and approbation" are the driving force of "all the toil and
>bustle of the world...the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of
>wealth"
Well, if this is what Adam Smith said, then I agree with him. Classical economics isn't completely wrong. People do respond to incentives, and people do want to improve their lives. I'm not offering proof, just speaking from (just barely) 30 years of experience. This is my opinion, but everything I've seen supports this hypothesis.
And I don't see how this notion is somehow incompatible with socialism.
Brett