Re: sociology of economic knowledge

[tom walker <lumpoflabour@xxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox  wrote:

> tom walker wrote:
> >
> > One of the core principles of mainstream
> > economics is 'non-tuism'
>
> Is this a pun of some kind I fail to get or is it a
> typo?

No. Just a very obscure term.

"the assumption that individuals do not take an
interest in the interests of those with whom they
strategically interact. More particularly, the
assumption of non-tuism implies that the utility
function of each individual, as a measure of her
preferences, is strictly independent of the utility
functions of those with whom she interacts."

It's another one of those grand "simplifying"
assumptions that most economists probably don't even
know they're making. The assumption is clearly
counter-factual -- people's preferences _do_ depend on
other people's preferences -- but without it, you
can't have discrete utility functions so you can't
model the thing mathematically* -- too much nonlinear
feedback.

The Sandwichman

*maybe you can model it mathematically, but not in a
way that makes economics useful for upholding certain
conventional opinions about markets, property,
preferences and equilibrium.

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