Adam Smith is not Responsible for Sociopath Max U
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 20 “Smith was not a Max U, but Rather the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists”
Now I, an economist, need to write about ethics. The fact that is a challenge is in part, Dr. McCloskey’s critique of us economists.
In the last chapter, the first of four discussing Adam Smith, she demonstrated how he had been reduced to the one ethic of prudence when his writings also valued justice and temperance.
McCloskey refers to the devolution of economics into being concerned only with prudence to the exclusion of other virtues, Max U.
“Max U,” remember, is a little joke, referring to the Maximization of Utility under Constraints that Samuelson laid down as the monopolistic principle of modeling in economics…Max…is literally a sociopath, reducing every experience to his own pleasure. He views everyone else as a vending machine. You put your money in and you get your pleasure out. (p. 186)
