.. as if they're just being good little objective scientists, categorizing, quantifying and describing reality. And indeed they can be impressive mathematicians - I once met an Economics professor who privately studying advanced calculus 'just to bone up a little'.

That's why I always appreciated brilliant and humane writers like John Kenneth Galbraith, who pointed out (like you do here) that this is in fact a machine-age mentality, in which we imagine ourselves to be totally free within the constraints of perfectly natural laws.

To the ultra-right, the 'market' is as natural force as say, gravity. And we are free to respect or ignore that natural force in the same way as we are free to jump (or not to jump) off a building in the belief we will fly

Well the 'market' is not a natural force, we live in a man-made society, and so-called objective economics is really always political economy, with its values based in human ideology (and history, as you point out), NOT some objective reality (as if we were talking about physics)

Markets and capitalism can work very well - provided we know their place and limitations within our human society. THAT MEANS: THE ECONOMY SHOULD SERVE THE PEOPLE, NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND, which is so very oppressive to the human spirit and individual freedom.

Our individuality and society have become totally dominated and COLONIZED (yeah there's that leftist jargon Tom - too bad) by the vast and pervasive economic machine which WE HAVE BUILT OVER THE CENTURIES .. it didn't grow by itself, according to some natural physical law. Let the markets serve us, not the other way round.