I suggest that many of our students, including some of our most thoughtful ones, are reluctant to let themselves be captured by the economic way of thinking because they see economic theory as at bottom an elaborate justification for an immoral society. Many people today do believe, however, that the activity of pursuing one's own interests, which generates supply and demand functions and through them the prices that coordinate production, is, if not wicked, at least somewhat immoral, and if not immoral then at least morally inferior. The Defense of Commercial Society Most economists will insist that anyone who views economic theory in this way is totally mistaken. Economists who teach economics as a defense of commercial society, they will claim, are not scientists but ideologues. While I agree that those who perceive economic theory as a system of thought that defends an immoral society are mistaken, I maintain that their mistake is only in supposing that the society it defends is immoral.
Economic theory is in large part an elaborate justification of commercial society.
To say that it merely describes, it does not justify, is to ignore what it's describing. Copernicus' description of the heliocentric system was a description, not a defense, of that system because the system required no defense. Many people today do believe, however, that the activity of pursuing one's own interests, which generates supply and demand functions and through them the prices that coordinate production, is, if not wicked, at least somewhat immoral, and if not immoral then at least morally inferior. Inferior to activity that aims at promoting the interests of others rather than one's own interests. We in the Western world have inherited a religious tradition that tells us we should do for others what we would like them to do for us and that we should give without expecting anything in return.