--- kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net> wrote:
> i believe doug's suggesting, as am i and Jim
> O'Conner, that the paradigm
> shift has to radically alter the very
> presuppositions upon which economics
> is founded: namely homo oeconimicus as that
> rationally choosing being who
> carries around a knapsack full of preferences which
> he whips out and acts
> on in various kinds of markets.
It's possible to vastly overestimate the extent to which economics is founded on this assumption, and most economists do. You can actually derive almost all of the important results of economics from properties of linear programming models (Kantorovich and Novozhilov actually did this at the Central Economic Mathematical Institute of the USSR). I don't disagree that economists in fact do think about people in homo-economicus terms, but that's a fact about the sociology and psycho-pathology of economists rather than about economic theory per se. Justin and his mate Hayek are absolutely right that most of the annoying things about markets represent problems that would appear under any system other than one based on household production. Finally, I'd note that the hardest-core free market nutters in existence are the Austrians, and they do not make the homoeconomicus assumption.
d^2
===== "Imagine the Duchess's feelings You could have pierced her with swords To find her youngest son liked Lenin And sold the Daily Worker near the House of Lords" -- Noel Coward
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