ABSTRACT
The history of economics has shown a remarkable tendency to cling to that world and to make emendations only when pushed by a variety of inexorable forces. It was a critical reinforcement to the continued confusion between economics as allocation and economics as valuation. Allocation and valuation are indeed different, and a discipline concerned only with the former can never permit fully aware choices to be made. It enabled economics to emulate the physical sciences and thus led to the coronation of equilibrium as normatively good in economics because in physics, from whence it came, it was natural. Institutionalism in the past attacked the use of competition in conventional theory, but failed to note that whatever equilibrium might mean in competitive markets, it means something different in imperfect markets. It seems inconsistent to place such faith in laissez-faire markets for economic allocation and so little in democratic processes for converting individual values into social policy.
