> We know that the basic assumptions held by neo-classical economists
> are wrong. One simple example: the notion that people are utility
> maximizers has been refuted in study after study in decades of
> psychological research. It's bizarre to me that economists continue
> to cling to fundamental premises that have been empirically discredited.
Have you heard of something called behavioral economics? It's an entire field of research - an especially fashionable field within the discipline right now - whose entire premise is that the utility-maximization assumption is wrong. It then shows why it's wrong and tries to develop the implications.
You seem to go around thinking everyone but you and a select few is too hopelessly blinded by ideology to see the obvious. Is this the influence of Nietzsche, who you seem to admire? Neoclassical economics has been going on for, say, 130 years. Do you really think all those illustrious Ph.D.'s came and went and no one but Miles Jackson and the folks in the Capital reading group ever stopped to think that the pure utility-maximizing assumption seems implausible and incompatible with many observable aspects of social behavior? And then they all took a jolly walk down to the sweatshop to carry out the afternoon beatings and have a good laugh?
SA