Nicholas J. Theocarakis wrote: ...I am not accusing anyone that s/he ignores constraints. I object to the fact that constraints are taken for granted. 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. Sumitra Shah