Hey, Brett! Something that I have appreciated about your work for a long time is your pointing out of how we confuse outcomes (of systems, of ways of thinking) for causes, as in the case here with your point about the way that "traits like heightened egotism and selfishness are outcomes of that society, not causes of it. In reality, economists were simply noticing an aspect of human nature that starts to bloom when people find themselves totally immersed in - and dependent on - the insecure and fluid flux of a market vortex."

Your mention of the different "Homo"s here reminds me of my frustration people who support universal healthcare who think that powerful people's opposition to universal healthcare is about a fear of having to pay more taxes and how they (these universal healthcare advocates in question) are only reflecting Homo Economicus back onto rich people, when they should see Homo Dominandi in them. As I often say, opposition to increased taxes has nothing to do with my powerful people oppose universal healthcare, but it's a convenient figleaf, and we should stop supplying that figleaf!

Your paragraph about your anecdote about working in the financial sector and the paragraph preceding it makes me think of the folly of liberal and progressive politicians and pundits using "taxpayer" and tax-to-spend thinking when discussing and debating government budgets. Here in the USA, so many public services are funded via taxation at the state and local level, and a big part of my project is explaining why that it is bad, why we should stop treating that arrangement as if it is somehow a law of physics, or something, as it validates "government should be run like a business" thinking, because it projects Homo Economicus onto the public good, which is poison! Here in Louisiana, there are Democratic Party politicians and pundits who speak about what is good for "taxpayers". No wonder we get the terrible outcomes that we do get!

"What’s important, though, is that those caring, playful, ecological parts of themselves struggle to express themselves in the market setting, and are pushed to the periphery in that context.

This has ideological implications, because Homo Economicus, as a central archetype in the system, also becomes a kind of Ideal that’s deployed by elites to justify and describe why they do the things they do."

That right there helps explain both why "taxpayer" identity and thinking is just Homo Economicus projected onto the government and why resisting that has been so difficult!

But resist it we must! The Public Money Framework, the Credit Theory Of Money, is how we can break out of that trap.

Thanks, again, for all of your great work.