He's a convenient fiction though. Since to homo oeconomicus a certain expense of USD 500 and the 50 % chance of a USD 1000 expense are the same, expect him to be rolled out to sell you high-deductible health insurance and health savings accounts. H. oeconomicus is the model human, consequently he isn't cashflow constrained, and the fact that HSAs double as tax shelters for the wealthy doesn't concern the Ideal Man either.
University economics is a religion, not a science, it offers up myths instead of testable predictions on observable reality. High finance is a different deal, but they surely don't build their models on university textbooks.
> University economics is a religion, not a science
That's a bit harsh. Is every field that employs simplified approximations of complex systems a religion as well? With that definition even physics is out and that's one of the more concrete sciences.
At times it does appear to be a religion because of the cult of personality that proliferates (remember the Greenspan years?) and, most significantly, the blind faith and slavish devotion to free markets being a solution to everything.
What I find most off-putting are those who advocate for wholesale changes in our society on little more than hypothesis and faith instead of running experiments starting at the smallest reasonable scale and then successively working your way up from that.
It should at least pretend to try to applying basic scientific methodologies to its practice.Psychology has evolved to being a rigorous, evidence based social science. That psychology is not one of the foundations of studying economics is also problematic too.
