askchapo

homo economicus

Lmao is this a new one? I think it's originally from Adam Smith where he argues it's a positive thing lol, and Samir Amin uses it sarcasticly, along with quips and jokes about "actually existing capitalism". I'll see if I can find it.

The liberal virus caused among its victims a curious schizophrenia. Humans no longer lived as whole beings, organizing themselves to produce what is necessary to satisfy their needs (what the learned have called "economic life") and simultaneously developing the institutions, the rules, and the customs that enable them to develop (what the same learned people have called "political life"), conscious that the two aspects of social life are inseparable. Henceforth, they lived sometimes as homo oeconomicus, abandoning to "the market" the responsibility to regulate their "economic life" automatically, and sometimes as "citizens," depositing in ballot boxes their choices for those who would have the responsibility to establish the rules of the game for their "political life."