The problem with the concept of "utility" as introduced by economists is that it is commonly used in a bait-and-switch. You can either use utility as a technic

The problem with the concept of "utility" as introduced by economists is that it is commonly used in a bait-and-switch. You can either use utility as a technical and unassailable term, taking it as axiomatic that humans are utility-maximizers. As a consequence, the term becomes vacuous, because whatever any human does at any point in time, well, it must have been because she or he had some unobservable notion of utility that was maximized by whatever they happened to be doing at the time. So you end up with a "scientific theory" that does not actually allow you to make any predictions, which makes it totally worthless. Furthermore, facts that seemingly contradict utility-maximization are easily argued away: For example, the fact that humans' behaviour does not appear consistent over time is explained by utility functions change over time.[1] Once you accept the notion of utility based on this technically unassailable approach to it, however, people have a tendency to subtly shift what they mean by utility, sneaking a hidden value judgement into their argument that might be hard to catch (of course, that value judgement always tends to boil down to: the utility that should be maximized is somewhat equivalent to monetary value). [2] Yes, there may be a small number of genuinely well-meaning academic economists who do this. However, public discourse has very few well-meaning economists[3], and even fewer academic ones. Given the difficulties of the term, it would be a pragmatic move to eliminate it. Frankly, I think the main reason that eliminating the notion of utility is so difficult is that eliminating that term leaves a vacuum that is difficult to fill. Explaining human nature is an extremely tough problem, which we are basically unable to solve today. Rather than acknowledge that they are unable to do it, economists worship their variant of the "god of the gaps". [1] Actually, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Whatever fact one points out that either contradicts or does not fit the existing (non-)evidence well, believers just tend to retreat to a technically unassailable definition of god that ends up making the statement "god exists" pretty vacuous. [2] Again, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Once one concedes that yes, a god whose existence is so vacuous might well exist, they will at some point switch their definition of god back to one which implies that their god can affect the physical world. [3] The problem is similar to regulatory capture, an idea expressed here: http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business-captured-economics.html http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business...