When Lionel Robbins coined that definition in the 1930s, he emphasised that economics makes no moral judgments. Economics is not concerned with ends as such. Consequently, economists have been, and will remain, unfazed by criticisms that they ignore the social or moral dimensions of economic policy. From their perspective, it is not their role to make the aesthetic judgment as to whether the countryside looks better or worse with or without dairy farms. They believe it is their role, however, to tell us that milk will be more costly in a countryside where dairy farms are maintained by government regulation.
Economists are impervious to moral criticism.
The Achilles heel of economics is not morality, but logic. Whenever economic theory is examined minutely, or measured by the intellectual standards of true sciences, it fails the test. The ultimate root of these failures is the desire that economists have to make understanding and managing the economy appear no more complex than understanding the behaviour of an isolated individual on a desert isle. All the economic homilies about utility and value, effort and price, ring true. But those of us who live in a complex market economy with its millions of firms and billions of consumers are surrounded by feedback effects all the time.