(1) Economics and Efficiency
Mainstream economics, in its vulgarized version, sounds like nothing but a calculator of efficiency. But mainstream economics, in its less vulgarized moments, does not refuse to take into account considerations like fairness, emotion, characteristics of human cognition, etc. If you include names like Stiglitz and Sen and Kahneman in your list of contemporary writers on economics, you should find economics more flexible than otherwise you might imagine.
My object here is not to defend economics. I myself do not believe that society should be organized solely around the principle of Pareto efficiency - in fact, the principle is so stringent that it can hardly offer concrete policy recommendations in the real world. But to mount a critique of efficiency, Pareto or not, we must, in my mind, be a bit more cautious. If the HK government costs the taxpapers quite a fortune, because the administrative officers - or bureacrats - enjoy an inordinately high pay, you as a tax-paying citizen might very well demand governmental reform aiming at administrative efficiency. And if the officers object, who are you that are now defining what efficiency is, you would probably find the question nonsense.
(2)Social Institutions
The critic is quick to argue that social institutions are man-made, and economic principles merely human attempts to understand certain social phenomena. Suppose in a community there are ten girls, one of which is particularly beautiful, say, G. Members of the community die to watch beautiful models doing catwalk; naturally, G gets the job, and none others can. G becomes very rich because of the short supply, but very great demand, of beauty, and the other girls can only seek less well-paid occupations.
No doubt G's wealth is founded upon a set of community agreements: property law, tax law, notion of beauty, notion of competition, even notion of what constitutes a permissible occupation, etc. So in the strict sense, the wealth is man-made. This product of social institutions can certainly be changed: proclaim tomorrow that all modelling and cat-walking is to be banned, and all fortune derived from it be forfeited. By one stroke, society achieves income equality. But shall it this way? Perhaps it shall. Or perhaps not.
(3) Visible Hands and Grabbing Hands
"被美國/WTO剝奪的南美洲種可可豆農民，
每年生產多少可可豆？
是他們的生產力真的不夠，
還是被有權有制的人定性為不夠而已(但他們卻掠奪別人的生產，視為自已的努力)？
天生我才必有用，基因迥異才不同。
有人擅生產原始品，有人擅製加工品，有人擅做服務行業，
誰人有資格定性別人的生產是「生產力不足」？
這些定性，難道不是人為的、不是一些人搞出來的嗎？
既然如此，即是它是可以改變的，不是嗎？"
I copied these lines from one commentator on this Forum. It is certainly true that different people have different talents: some in producing raw materials, some in calculating the value of an option. But however much a society is regulated or not regulated - unless all incomes are set by fiat - different kinds of occupation tend to result in different levels of pay.
Economics need not posit that a society must not be regulated. But economics does recognize that the value of a thing or an activity might not be intrinsically determined. (Let me abstract from discussing the Labor Theory of Value, on a correct reading of which I dare not venture yet.) The thought actually precedes what we today believe to be the beginning of modern political economy: Hobbes expresses the ancient wisdom thus: Every man has a price.
If the value of a thing or an activity is not intrinsically determined, we might nevertheless discover that it is the product of: 1. human inclinations, 2. social institutions, 3. errors of judgment, etc. A confluence of these factors sets the price for cocoa, as well as that for a cat-walking G.
In this set of factors one might find the imprint of a visible - and very powerful - hand, say, the hand of the law-giver; but one might also find, and indeed likely so, the grabbing hands of many simple souls, demanding this or that kind of cocoa, this or that type of model, with little regard for the fate of the producers or cat-walkers. Economics simply asserts that these grabbing hands cannot be ignored.
The trouble for the critic when confronted with these grabbing hands is that responsibility cannot be easily attributed then. When one sees that G's fortune is the product of a tax law, well, one can damn it and abolish it. But if one sees that her fortune is the forbidden fruit of her beauty, rare in supply, and of the desires of many to watch beautiful models - then what? Economics cannot answer this question properly. If an economist tries to argue that economics has a scientific answer to it, he transgresses.
(4) Market and Power
Popular economic writers tend to represent that everything is set by impersonal forces - the market; their enemies in the diverse humanities tend to stress the role of power, very concrete human power. Economic thinking need not arbitrate between these two views: they point only to the various dimensions, the totality of which constitutes the true complexity of what lies behind one perennial question: What is value?