ABSTRACT
The unrealistic mathematical models of “autistic economics” would be bad enough if they stayed in the classroom, detached from the real world. Unfortunately, though, the dominant school of economics has itself become a powerful political force: at least in the USA, it is rapidly reshaping public policy in its own image. In the area I am most familiar with, environmental policy, the invasion of abstract economic theory threatens to impose the logic of the marketplace on the very different reality of nature.
