MICHAEL McPHERSON
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cluding most claims for the virtues of the free market - do depend on
supposing that economic actors look out only for themselves; but no
insurmountable theoretical problems are posed by allowing that
such actors may want to promote the well-being of their family,
friends, or even strangers .
What goes much deeper, however, is the assumption that each
person does indeed have
some
well-defined set of wants, even if they
are partly altruistic, and the further assumption that that set of
wants - the individual's ordering of his preferences - is single,
stable, and consistent. In neoclassical economic theory, the person
simply
is
his "preference ordering" and a great deal depends on the
assumption that those preferences stay put. Deep-seated problems
about the nature and character of wants, problems thoughtfully
probed by economists of earlier generations including Alfred Mar–
shall, Thorstein Veblen, and Frank Knight are swept away by that
assumption. Disturbing questions can be raised about a social
system that helps to generate the very wants it satisfies. But such
issues are conveniently bypassed in neoclassical theory by supposing
that the wants in question are simply "given." The assumption of
stable tastes also underlies the empirical analysis of demands for
goods and services: it is because tastes remain the same that we can
suppose that measurement of past responses of consumers to
changes in prices and incomes will allow us successfully to predict
future changes .
The conception of the self as a fixed and unitary bundle of
preferences shapes the economist's view not only of the
results
of
market behavior but of the
processes
of economic choice as well. Am–
bivalence has no natural place in the theory: the mental struggle of
the dieter in front of the refrigerator- or more poignantly of the al–
coholic in front of the bottle - is brushed aside. The human drive for
self-development is likewise gone: neoclassical preference theory
cannot accommodate Frank Knig-ht's intriguing suggestion that
"what the commonsense individual really wants is not satisfaction for
the wants he has, but more
and better
wants." And the peculiarly
human capability to stand in judgment of our own wants- so well
captured in Dostoevsky's underground man who can despise his cra–
ven self and simultaneously at another level feel liberated by his
own depravity - is a capability utterly foreign to the neoclassical
view .
Neoclassical actors, with their single, all-purpose preference
