not consciously created (it is not a secret weapon conjured by “big business”). Rather, economics inherited it from religion and political theory. Religion contributed the notion of the sacredness of the individual and the sinfulness of all before God; political science contributed “the rights of man,” summarized in the motto “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; economics combined the religious and political views to create a new creature: Homo oeconomicus—one who has the freedom to pursue