The Role of Values in Post-Modern Economics

Economists, like all mortals, spend most of their time thinking about definitive realities. We have made a profession of discovering laws of human behavior that govern resource use. We use our laws to generate policy and our desire is to progress toward the absolute truth of economics so that we need not live amid chaotic unpredictable happenings. We are proud that our discipline is a science and we feel more kinship at times with the natural sciences than we do with other social sciences. Unlike other social sciences, we build on the notion that people have common objectives and are rational. From this basis we are only a stone's throw away from objective science and highly reliable policy. Our definitive reality is the mechanistic world that is ours to conquer.