4 ms·
Not "economics", but classical-liberal and neoliberal ones (Austrian and Chicago school)
by EMIRELADERO 3y ago
Not "economics", but classical-liberal and neoliberal ones (Austrian and Chicago school)
- eru 3y agoNo, they don't stipulate that. They just assume that you have preferences and want to satisfy them. Those preferences can include 'earn as much money as possible', but they can also include 'feed starving children in the orphanage across the street'. The theory doesn't really care about the exact shape of your preferences. It's a useful shorthand to assume that economic actors want to maximize profit, because that allows them to spend money on almost any other goal they have (like feeding the orphans). But economics can still help us understand why more people want to be teachers, even if the pay is low, than programmers or prostitutes or truck drivers in oil boom counties.
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoThis commenter put it better than I ever could, so I'll respond with that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38838746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38838746