.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As a social sciences student, I have realized how much the cancer of economic thinking has spread throughout this field of study. What I hate, more than the ideological framework in itself (which is an interesting perspective in itself), is the smug, self-satisfied and downright authoritarian belief held by its proponents that their economic rationality is the only rationality, that they got it all figured out, and that everybody else is just unable to see the truth because their judgment is clouded by silly things like norms and values. It never occurs to their minds that norms and values are also part of the human experience and play an essential role in any well-functioning society, or that no sane human being has no other goal than to maximize its material interests. It's this delusion of grandeur that makes homo economicus theory one of the most dangerous ideas of the 21st century.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As a social sciences student, I have realized how much the cancer of economic thinking has spread throughout this field of study. What I hate, more than the ideological framework in itself (which is an interesting perspective in itself), is the smug, self-satisfied and downright authoritarian belief held by its proponents that their economic rationality is the only rationality, that they got it all figured out, and that everybody else is just unable to see the truth because their judgment is clouded by silly things like norms and values ...

It's this delusion of grandeur that makes homo economicus theory one of the most dangerous ideas of the 21st century.

I'm sorry, Antonio, but please get off your high horse. Don't be so combative unless you can describe a set of norms that predicts annualized quaterly GDP growth within 0.3 percentage points.

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Just because you can predict GDP growth doesn't mean you have found the explanation to every single human or social phenomenon ever.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As a social sciences student, I have realized how much the cancer of economic thinking has spread throughout this field of study. What I hate, more than the ideological framework in itself (which is an interesting perspective in itself), is the smug, self-satisfied and downright authoritarian belief held by its proponents that their economic rationality is the only rationality, that they got it all figured out, and that everybody else is just unable to see the truth because their judgment is clouded by silly things like norms and values ...

It's this delusion of grandeur that makes homo economicus theory one of the most dangerous ideas of the 21st century.

I'm sorry, Antonio, but please get off your high horse. Don't be so combative unless you can describe a set of norms that predicts annualized quaterly GDP growth within 0.3 percentage points.

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Just because you can predict GDP growth doesn't mean you have found the explanation to every single human or social phenomenon ever.

I firmly believe that the main reason non-economists hate on economics is because they fundamentally misunderstand what it is. They think it's psychology. They think that economics is trying to answer the question "Why did I buy that banana today?" But it isn't. It's trying to answer questions like "Why does X number of bananas get sold every day in the US?" Or "Why is the price of a banana X dollars?"

Economic models don't explain every single human ever because it's not supposed to do that.

You're missing the point. Nobody is attacking economists for doing their job as economists (I mean, there would be some legitimate criticism to voice against how some economists have been doing their job in the past 30 years, but that's besides the point). The problem is that a few economists - but also an awful lot of non-economists - have decided that the conceptual tools and theoretical framework of modern microeconomics can be applied to every social science, from sociology to politics, to psychology etc. Basically, you can do away with "subjective" notions like ideology or socialization and examine everything in terms of interest maximization, rational choice and game theory. That is a very dangerous trend.