Economic Motivation (6) Economics

Economists like to simplify the world to make their models easier to manipulate. Optimising one variable is much easier than optimising five variables with variable weighting between them. Therefore, they have chosen to ignore love of family, love of neighbour and responsibilities to others. They focus exclusively on love of self, and their models concentrate on optimising self-love. That makes their models easier to estimate, but it means they no longer reflect reality. For some purposes, this might not matter, but in many situations it will make their conclusions unrealistic.

This simplification of reality means that economists tend to attribute all economic growth to people pursing self-interest. The emphasis on self-interest has caused Christians to worry that their morality is inconsistent with economic development. Their worries are unjustified. The emphasis on self-interest is a distortion of reality, so we do not need to change our morality to fit with economics. Christians values deal with economic reality. Economics needs to adjust its theory to fit with economic reality. Not the other way round.