Is “economic rationality” so “incredibly weak” as to be irrelevant? If this abstraction never applies to real thinkers, why isn’t the economist’s concept of it a red herring? Surely economists are trying to model real rationality. If people don’t actually think in the way that economists say they do, we should dispense with the economist’s model.

If economists now have a better understanding of rationality, does that better model still entail that decentralized economies are better than command ones?

A philosophical perspective may be too broad for economic purposes, just as an economic perspective may be too abstract for sociobiological, chemical, or physical purposes. So what? Does that invalidate the broader perspectives?

I write for philosophical purposes, not for economic ones. I write at that level of generality. If you say philosophy is entirely useless, that’s one thing. But just because a certain broad perspective is too broad for narrower purposes, doesn’t mean there’s no sense in having the broad perspective for broader purposes.

Also, capitalism can be defined in different ways. I agree that the private ownership of the means of production can be implemented differently by governments. But that’s a distraction between it combines capitalism itself with governmental regulation. If we look just at the trajectory of private ownership of the means of production, at whether that kind of economy in the abstract ends up being beneficial or self-destructive, I think the latter is more likely the case. Capitalism itself is a powerful force of production that needs to be reined in, as Keynes said, because left to its devices, this mode of production destroys the economy and perhaps the biosphere.

Now what side are most contemporary economists on regarding that broad question of the benefits and downside of capitalism?