Why Do Economists Have Such a Hard Time Imagining Open Source Biomedical Research? — Dean Baker

Why do most economists do anything? Because most economists do it. It's a club.

The fundamental assumption of conventional economics in a capitalist society is that prices equal value, that markets are the most effective and efficient means of creating and distributing economic value through price discovery, and that monetary incentives are necessary for innovation through competition. Using this framework, most economy believe that the natural operation and spontaneous ordering of markets can be modeled "scientifically," meaning in the same way as the natural sciences. Giving this framework up would involve admitting that economics is a social science or "moral science" (Keynes) rather than a natural science that describes operations of laws of nature using formal modeling.

Veblen saw through this over a hundred years ago. Marx had anticipated it, but that was in the classical period prior to the development of neoclassical economics aka marginalism, one of the aims of which was to blunt Marx's critique of capitalism as based on rent extraction.

Open source threatens the capitalist enterprise by replacing competition with cooperation. It's coming.

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Why Do Economists Have Such a Hard Time Imagining Open Source Biomedical Research?
Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C