i do not know about economics, but at least in biology, its a very powerful assumption in terms of its utility. which suggests to me that the burden rests upon us to defend a more holistic model... no?
in another post, i wrote:
> a lot of very important work was done in the mid-20th-century against
> the notion of a complete, predetermined and unchanging inner nature that
> determines each individual's personality, position, etc. as i understand
> them, none of these authors oppose that work and to a large extent would
> like to extend the humanist/leftist tradition that motivates and
> benefits from such work.
after reading further posts on the thread (such as the one about pinker's appearance at the AEI), i realize that perhaps i naively took some of these gents (though not singer) at their word.
--ravi