econ 101 as ideology: markets justified in terms of ability to achieve stable equilibrium and government intervention critiqued as usually an impediment econ 101 makes it seem as if D and S are equal forces determining price when capitalism is driven forward by right-ward jumps in supply conditions, which forces adaptations in society by the going under of the firms that can't make the jump and the continuous whetting of demand to dispose of the ever more immense accumulation of commodities econ 101 is not a study of the real social formation in the actual history of capitalism but an idealization called the market based economy, which would be fine if this distinction were clearly made econ 101 is based on the idea of a voluntary transaction usually with no clarification of what would make a transaction voluntary given present moral or legal standards; there is usually no discussion of whether those standards are defensible in a moral stance or how they stand up through cross-cultural analysis Productive efficiency is usually understood as a static concept of making sure you are moving along the PPF while for Marx the law of value is essentially a dynamic movement of pushing the PPF rightward as a result of rising labor productivity, which is the most important social force usually little discussion of when diminishing returns holds and does not hold Econ 101 begins with the self-maximizing or self-aggrandizing agent, a psychological given; but that's the kind of character mask we are, for the most part, forced to assume, on pains of survival, in a market economy. This society won't honor if you act otherwise; you won't be shunned if you act this way. From an anthropological perspective this is astonishing. But so socially accepted is the model of said agent Econ I as ideology tends to neglect the importance of social norms even in a market economy.
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