The Economic Way of Thinking
I'm teaching Micro I this semester, in a situation where my textbook was chosen before I was the instructor. The book is Heyne, Boettke, and Prychitko's The Economic Way of Thinking . So far I like the book... but not every bit of it. For instance, in the first chapter, the authors claim: "[The economic way of thinking ] can be best summarized as a set of concepts derived from one fundamental presupposition: All social phenomena emerge from the actions and interactions of individuals who are choosing in response to expected additional benefits and costs to themselves. " That presupposition strikes me as both: 1) Unnecessary; and 2) Clearly false. Let us take up the second point first. All we need note to conclusively show the presupposition is false is that society itself, the social phenomena par excellence , certainly did not come about through such individual weighing of costs and benefits. The individual of rational choice theory only came to exist histo...