ABSTRACT
A significant part of economics is predicated on the assumption of homo economicus, the rational economic human who seeks to maximise economic benefit and profit.
The idea of ‘rational man’, or a rational human, originally appears in the writing of John Stuart Mill (1836):
[Political economy] does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end.
