Your first paragraph is pretty revealing since it implies that economists can pretty much ignore criticisms of economics that come from outside the discipline, that only economists understand the field well enough for their criticisms to matter.

And how exactly does that attitude differ from the Scientologist’s insularity? Likewise, the Scientologist will insist that no outsiders understand the “religion,” so all the criticisms can be dismissed as being due to ignorance.

What I’m criticizing is orthodox economics’ role in promoting neoliberalism, the connection between the pseudoscientific prestige of the field and the resulting laissez-faire capitalism. Of course, that kind of economy would likely have developed in the US without the economists, but the cheerleading is especially obnoxious because it was done with a veneer of scientific neutrality.