Yes, we're all potentially corrupted, but some of us face much greater temptations than others.

My criticism of economics is perfectly Kuhnian. I've been saying all along that all civilizations have their creeds and priesthoods, even late-modern secular societies. Those are the paradigms we presuppose until anomalies force us to make a radical shift in perspective. Wouldn't you agree that "free trade" has been the Western paradigm, and that economists have fostered that oversimplification, regardless of the hedges they bury in the small print?

What's been the upshot of economics, a balanced analysis all possible economies or a wild celebration of the power of free markets, and thus the pretense that such markets don't inevitably develop into plutocracies that swallow the democracy? Why haven't economists focused more on the conflict between capitalism and democracy? Has that been an externality? Who decides on what's counted as an externality or as an irrelevancy to economists? Some questions have evidently been more convenient than others in that field.