When I  wrote: .. the assertion that the butcher pursues self-interest and 
   does not intend the benefit the customer gets from consuming meat is only 
   half the story. The other half is that the customer intends to get the 
   benefit and pays for the meat., Sumitra Shah wrote: 
 
               Indeed it is only half the story. How and where the meat was 
   cooked, and by whom remains untold. Since economics deals with production, 
   it is an artificial neglect of not only the productive activity, but also of 
   the other complex motives of human beings. 
 
 
   I have two points to reply here. 
 
 
    1. What is missing? 
 
   I wrote: The other half is that the customer intends to get the benefit and 
   pays for the meat. I did not mention cooking as being the missing part.  I 
   wish to argue that the failure to explicitly include the means of payment in 
   the  models  of  the  market  resulted  in the split between micro and 
   macroeconomics, and between trade theory and monetary theory, and even 
   between  exchange  models  and trade models. If we include the payment 
   explicitly,  then  [1]micro becomes macro, and [2]trade theory becomes 
   monetary theory. The unresolved debates in macroeconomics are mostly about 
   payment, though not seen to be so. Secondly, the reconciliation between the 
   customers intention to derive benefit and the sellers lack of concern with 
   the customers benefit is crucial for [3]social choice theory, and especially 
   for welfare economics via Menger, Pareto and Arrow. I hope to explain this 
   in future posts. The failure to include payments and agreements between the 
   buyer  and seller to reconcile their concerns with the benefit has had 
   crippling effects on theory. 
 
 
   I  would not say that it was a neglect. It was a problem of worldview, 
   namely, how we used to see the universe of the economy. Smith and others 
   surely  did not neglect demand when they thought about the market. The 
   problem was to find out a method of talking explicitly about payments. Says 
   Law and quantity theory of money did try to pick up the matter of payment, 
   but without a sharp formal articulation. So I am not convinced that it was 
   neglected. I am saying that it is a modeling issue of explicitly bringing 
   the payments into the picture. It was a failure to see something that needed 
   to be seen. 
 
 
   2. Does economics study production? 
 
   I am very puzzled by the statement Since economics deals with production, it 
   is an artificial neglect of not only the productive activity...  I do not 
   understand  how  economics  can  deal with production and then neglect 
   productive  activity  artificially. I also feel dazed by the view that 
   economics deals with production. I thought that production as such (when not 
   intended for sale through the market) is a subject of a branch of biology 
   called  ecology.  In  it,  the  principle of conservation of energy is 
   articulated as constrained optimization so that the mouse reaches a general 
   equilibrium  of both production and consumption such that the ratio of 
   marginal utilities is equal to the ratio of marginal costs. 
 
 
   For gregarious animals such as ants or bees, and especially of primates and 
   man, there is a political structure within the group to apply a political 
   rule to production: from each according to ability to each according to 
   need. This determines division of labor and distribution of output. This is 
   not economics yet. Only if production is meant to be a way to earn  profit 
   through exchange does it become a part of economics. In short, economics 
   studies exchange, as Whately articulated so well, and as Mises left no doubt 
   about it. 
 
 
   I  realize  that it is possible to be confused about Marxian political 
   philosophy versus Marxian economics. The talk about modes of production and 
   how they affect beliefs and cultures is not economics: it is political 
   philosophy and sociology. Marxian economics talks about exchange and theory 
   of value. The economics in Marx consists of the incomplete circuit CMC 
   (commodity-money-commodity) and MCM (money-commodity-money) in the exchange 
   scenario,  and the labor theory of value. It is a mistake to suppose that 
   labor theory of value is merely a production-related matter. Ricardian trade 
   theory is meant to tell us that the exchange process affects the decision to 
   allocate labor to the production of particular goods, so that the labor 
   content is a response to exchange. In short, in Marxian economics, the 
   subject is exchange, and not production as such. 
 
 
   My fear is that the whole Keynesian enterprise of looking at consumption is 
   thrown away as artificial neglect. I am sure that long before the customer 
   can cook the meat, Keynes is crying about how he is going to pay for it. The 
   payment, in the form of money, has something rather crucial to affect how 
   the meat gets to the customer or fails to go. No, I am not convinced that 
   economics  deals  with  production  and  neglects  productive activity 
   artificially. 
 
 
   Blessed will be the day when someone can assure me that the customer does 
   not care whether he gets any benefit from the meat he buys, and that nobody 
   cares about payment. That day, I will happily go to the Trent River and 
   spend my life in production: catch fish and more fish, and then sometimes 
   neglect cooking it, because sushi is not taboo. I do not know about raw 
   meat, however. 
 
 
   Mohammad Gani 
 
References 
 
   1. http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eps/mac/papers/0404/0404012.pdf 
   2. http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eps/it/papers/0405/0405005.pdf 
   3. http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eps/mic/papers/0405/0405008.pdf