Behavioral economics offers the sensation of reform without reform

Evidence

Ultimately, the more perceptive journalists acknowledged this: “While behaviorists and other critics poked a lot of holes in the edifice of rational market finance, they haven’t been willing to abandon that edifice.” It’s not even clear they have been all that willing to bring themselves to look out the window. The primary benefit of behavioral economics was conjuration of the warm glow that came from feeling like you had changed your economic stripes without having to change your mind, or even your models. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 746

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The ‘warm glow of changing stripes without changing your mind’ reads as durable advice about self-deception in intellectual life generally.
• XREF: Connects to the broader post-2008 story where critique is absorbed into the orthodoxy it attacks — parallel to how Mirowski frames the thought collective’s adaptability. — connects to: Post-crisis behavioral economics reduced Keynes to irrationality that disrupts general equilibrium. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 729; Behavioral economics gets coopted to excuse rather than reform orthodox theory — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 745; Behavioral economics repackaged government intervention during the neoliberal era — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 346 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Behavioral economics gets coopted to excuse rather than reform orthodox theory #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 745
• Behavioral economists never intended to displace mainstream neoclassical orthodoxy #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 741
• Behavioral economics repackaged government intervention during the neoliberal era #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 346
• The economics profession’s failed self-reform serves the neoliberal project by generating noise #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 835