Where the customers are always wrong: some thoughts on the societal impact of a non-pluralist economic education

Economics, like any other scientific pursuit, ought to be educational. However, two observations cast doubt on whether it is. First, we find that students of economics seem to become less civilised the more they surrender to their discipline's ways. Secondly, contemporary economics, as practised in the best departments, has lost its capacity to value the features which are essential to the good society. This, the paper claims, is a motivated failure that constitutes a powder keg buried deep in the foundations of complex liberal societies. To defuse it, and retrieve from economics insights useful to a good society, economics desperately needs (and deserves) a hefty dose of critical pluralism.