Commentary
Many years ago as I was finishing my BS in economics and mathematics, I was invited to help review a book for the journal Markets and Morality. The book, “The Economics of Sin: Rational Choice or No Choice at All?” by Samuel Cameron, was apparently written from the perspective of an unhinged rational choice economist who would describe even adultery and cannibalism as welfare maximalization in a free market. The author goes as far as to make the astounding claim that “we encounter economists serving the function of being the new secular priesthood.”
The shocking use of sacral language for the role economists play in the secular realm is troubling, but is it entirely wrong?…