We’re All Pluralists Now: Challenges and Victories of the Pluralist Movement

In a behavioural economics class recently, I was discussing the concept of pluralism. The exact question up for discussion was, “is economics right?” which — before any answer can be given — demands we understand what economics actually is. From these postgraduate students with whom I was speaking, ideas were provided hesitantly. Economics involved supply and demand and had something to do with utility maximisation. Keynes had been an economist, one student has said.

Answering the question of what economics is is an essay for another time. My response to these students, then, given the daunting task that might have faced me, was that economics was the study of value systems. It questions what society values, how it values things and — on the question of utility — what does value actually mean?

Again, these are big questions, and often superfluous ones. I argued as much; economics as a discipline is innately tied to political forces, with political economy, for example, often being the study of what to do with surplus production. Beyond anything, this is a political question. At this point, I believe there was a realisation. If politics can change, so too can economics. If attitudes can change, so too can what we value.