Ethics as Generalised Economics: A Conceptual Framework for Dealing with Choices Between Economic and Non‐Economic Activities

Starting from the premise that ethics is the ‘science’ of free choice or voluntary decisions, it seems economists have a special contribution to make towards a ‘general’ theory of choice to deal with decisions that cut across the social sciences. Economists have devised elaborate and sophisticated theories and techniques (eg. the indifference map, general equilibrium theory) to deal with economic choices and decisions. However, economic decisions are only a sub‐set of decisions which are analytically separate but not independent of other decisions. By treating economic choices as if they were self‐contained, economists in their policy advice and normative economics have committed a major fallacy of separating ‘economic welfare’ from ‘total welfare’. Consequently, their advice may, at best, be ‘good’ economics but are often ‘bad’ ethics or ‘bad’ politics. Conversely, the advice of moralists (or political scientists) may be ‘good’ ethics (or ‘good’ politics) but may often be bad as economics. In either case, the decisions are almost certain to be unsatisfactory or ‘wrong’.