Sumitra Shah wrote:  
"Economics as a science takes most of the social phenomena as outside   
its positivist purview and therefore exogenous.  Perhaps the trouble   
really lies in the 'economics' & 'political economy' dichotomy. In the   
development of economics as a highly precise, mathematical   
(physics-like?) discipline, it did create a Moloch (had to look this one   
up) on whose altar the social nature of the subject had to be   
sacrificed. There is a schizophrenic quality to this development, a far   
cry from the classical view of what they were trying to do. The   
normative concerns of economic society necessarily get a short shrift in   
the process."  
  
  
I think this is an unfortunate distortion of the development of modern   
economics.  We have learned that normative issues are not easily   
settled.  Moreover, bad or cynical motives tend to be attributed to   
those who don't see things the way the bleeding hearts do.  Marx's   
invectives against the likes of Ricardo and J.S. Mill are an example. He   
called those who didn't see things his way the "hired price fighters."   
Adam Smith surely was not on the side of the likes of modern bleeding   
hearts.  
  
Tell a bleeding heart analyst that the employer paying what is described   
as a "slave wage" is doing the employee a favor, and you get insults in   
return.  Say that the statement, "I made him an offer he couldn't   
refuse," does not imply any compulsion, and really doesn't mean much   
since all (serious) offers are made in the hope that they would not be   
refused.  You might get a puzzled look in return.  Tell a bleeding heart   
to look up a principles of economics textbook's explanation that   
participants in all voluntary exchanges must expect to benefit from them   
(and they typically do), and you might get some other meaningless   
retort.  Tell the bleeding heart to provide the perceived destitute the   
means for a better life -- the true meaning of charity -- instead of   
attempting to extort that from other people, and they might wonder if   
you have a beating heart in your chest.  Quoting the parable of the Good   
Samaritan also might not help.  And so on.  
  
I'm not trying to start a new thread here.  Let's not go there.  I'm   
only trying to point out that separating distributional *preferences*   
from defining economics as the science of choice should not be   
misconstrued as turning economics from it being a useful social science   
to a barren one.  
  
James Ahiakpor