On Jul 4, 2009, at 8:52 PM, Matthias Wasser wrote:
> Not the power of capitalists as such, no.
But the power - and I guess I overlooked the capitalist qualifier - not being a theist I've often come to conflate power and money.
A recent post in the list suggested that the theocrats of iran had the support of the merchant classes, and I began to view them as a 'ruling elite'. The Wikipedia entry for homo economicus seems to make the Qum eligible for treatment as economic humans acting to retain power.
"Homo economicus is seen as "rational" in the sense that well-being as defined by the utility functionis optimized given perceived opportunities. That is, the individual seeks to attain very specific and predetermined goals to the greatest extent with the least possible cost. Note that this kind of"rationality" does not say that the individual's actual goals are "rational" in some larger ethical,social, or human sense, only that he tries to attain them at minimal cost."