Economists run amok!

This is what happens when you give neoclassical economists their own column.

Reminds me of an apocryphal tale about a scorpion who wants to cross a river and asks a frog for help. The frog initially declines, “how do I know you wont sting me” he says.

“Because otherwise I wouldn’t get to the other side of the river.”

“How do I know you won’t sting me once I get to the other side?”

“Because I’ll be so grateful that I couldn’t imagine stinging you.”

So the frog takes the scorpion on his back and starts to swim across the river. Midway through the scorpion stings the frog on the back. In his last dying breath the frog cries out “Why did you sting me? You too will die?”

“I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature,” said the scorpion before drowning to death.

See neoclassical economists are a lot like the scorpion, they can’t help optimizing and calculating the welfare implications for everything: it’s in their nature. They may not be able to tell you much of any use, but goddamit if they can’t find a maximum over a convex set.