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"Actually, David, you may be closer to the truth than you think," Mary stated. "The whole idea of the maquiladora industry in Mexico is a case in point.

"Some 2,500 foreign owned assembly plants, employing more than 600,000 workers, have set up shop in Mexico. These plants operate virtually tax free.

"In addition, there are a number of other inducements offered in order to attract entrepreneurs. The wages of the workers are extremely low even though a great deal of high-tech work is often involved.

"Furthermore, the unions - if one can call them such - are known as 'white unions' and actually are controlled and run by the companies. As a result, there are no benefits for the workers, and the working conditions are generally poor, with very little regard for the health or safety of the workers.

"Environmental regulations governing the emissions and effluents of these plants are almost non-existent. The few ordinances which do exist are, for the most part, not enforced, and whatever penalties may be assigned to companies do not have an effective dimension of deterrence.

"The strip of land running along the Rio Grande where many of the maquiladora industries operate is one, big, toxic wasteland. Numerous places even glow in the dark from the materials dumped by these plants, and, yet, many of the workers construct ramshackle huts in such dumps because that is all they can afford with the wages they are being paid.

"Originally, when NAFTA was being negotiated, assurances were given that these maquiladora industries would disappear as a result of the benefits that supposedly would accrue to all concerned parties by virtue of the provisions of the trade agreement. In point of fact, since the signing of the NAFTA pact, the maquiladora model has spread to many other parts of Mexico.

"The people of Mexico are held hostage by these maquiladora industries since the latter understand quite well that no government action will be taken against the plants due to the various financial considerations which, through one means or another, end up in the pockets of government officials who help the foreign owned plants continue their operations free of disturbance and interference. If anyone objects to: the low level of wages; or, the absence of benefits; or, the lack of concern about the health and safety of workers; or, the failure of the 'unions' to protect workers, then such people will be eliminated through different means - some more violent than others - and replaced by someone else from amongst the millions of other Mexicans who are desperate for an opportunity to be exploited by the maquiladora industries since such abuse offers a marginally better existence than they otherwise 'enjoy'.

"Furthermore, even if the different levels of government were suddenly to develop a conscience and actually act for the good of the people they purport to serve, by repealing all of the perks of the maquiladora industries and forcing the foreign businesses to become good corporate neighbors, this would accomplish very little. The companies in question simply would fold up their tents and silently steal away in the night to set up shop in some other land where the governments are prepared to live in accordance with the maquiladora model.

"When American consumers purchase the goods produced by these companies, we are accomplishing a number of things simultaneously. First of all, we are subsidizing not only the exploitive abuse of human beings in other countries, we also are taking jobs and money away from American workers.

"Secondly, we are aiding and abetting the degradation of the environment, both in Mexico, and, eventually, due to the ramifications of the toxic cycle, in America as well. Moreover, in order to compete with these maquiladora industries, American firms are trying to cut costs by lobbying for a deregulation of environmental controls in relation to the emissions and effluents being generated by American businesses, and, this also is leading to the dissolution and degradation of our communities and the environment.

"Thirdly, and again under the banner of economic competitiveness, there is a constant pressure in American industry and businesses to erode wage levels, benefit packages, job security, health and safety precautions in the work place, as well as union activity. In other words, the exploitation of human beings in other countries becomes the center piece in an argument attempting to rationalize the exploitation of workers in North America.

"As far as I'm concerned, David, all of this talk about an optimum and efficient allocation of resources, or, the generation of a wealth in which all can participate with relative equatability, or, an enhancement of the common good, that, allegedly, is brought about a properly run market system, is a lot of hogwash. These theories are based on assumptions that are either false, highly contentious, unprovable or dependent on a number of false-economies.

"For example, the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism maintains that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest, both on the part of businesses as well as individuals. The only problem with this is that not only are the meanings of 'the common good' and 'self-interest' both open to debate, one needs to justify how uninhibited activity of any kind can best serve either the common good or self-interest.

"Economists inclined to the capitalist, free market system tend to set up a number of arbitrary, self-serving criteria and standards for evaluating what constitutes self-interest or the common good. Socialist and communist oriented economists do the same, so although what I'm about to say is developed in the context of a discussion of free market economics, in point of fact, the underlying principles are transferable, with slight modifications, to both socialist and communist approaches to economics.

"Economists qua economists, for the most part, are not interested in matters of spirituality, morality, truth, duties of care, human obligations to the rest of creation, the nature of justice, or the purpose of life. Resources such as kindness, spiritual wisdom, integrity, sincerity, tolerance, forgiveness, love, generosity, peace, and compassion are irrelevant to their models unless one can demonstrate how to convert the value of such resources into quantifiable functions of currencies, wages, costs or material goods.

"Economists, as usual, have got everything backward. Currencies, wages, costs and material goods are not appropriate measures of spirituality, morality, justice, wisdom, identity, duty, and so on. Rather, one must come to an understanding of the meaning and significance of the latter issues in order to properly address questions and problems concerning the role, value or function of currencies, wages, costs and material goods as one attempts to ascertain the true nature of the common good and self-interest.

"Economists can, if they wish, try to argue that when one introduces matters such as spirituality, justice, or truth into the market, this has a distorting effect on the activity of those markets. Non-economists can counter, just as easily, and far more profoundly, that any system of economics which defines self-interest and the common good purely in material/quantitative terms has a distorting effect on the activities of spirituality and, ultimately, anything which disturbs the latter kinds of activity will end up disturbing market considerations of a purely material and quantitative character in extremely destructive ways.

"On the other hand, economists may wish to argue that ultimate questions about spirituality, truth, morality, justice, duty, meaning and identity are irresolvable. If they do, then all of their pronouncements about self-interest, the common good, equatability, and the optimum allocation of resources are totally arbitrary and relative to the whims and desires of those who wish to set the agenda for what constitutes the latter's version of the common good, enlightened self-interest and so on.

"If economists should wish to argue that economics is only about how to allocate goods and services efficiently- once certain, fundamental political or policy decisions have been established concerning the nature of the common good, then economics is really irrelevant to, or, at best, derivative from, the most important questions of life. As such, economic considerations, of some sort, may have a role to play after hammering out working agreements on the more basic issues, but we should not be allowing the caboose to drive the train as is the fashion these days.

"Furthermore, economists are presuming that cost-efficiency is the only criteria for determining how goods and services are to be distributed. In many situations, the costs to the quality of human spirituality, compassion, morality, identity, and integrity, far outweigh any considerations of cost-efficiencies that are calculated in terms of dollars and cents. Any system of economics that is predicated on the latter kind of bottom line, while, at the same time, ignoring the former, is rooted in a false-economy of substantial proportions.

"Many of our educational, environmental, political, legal and social problems have their origins in, and are significantly shaped by, such false-economies. This is not only a matter of being penny wise and pound foolish, but it reflects a complete ignorance about how to go about calculating the true costs - socially, environmentally and individually - of any given economic proposal.

"Most economists don't have a clue about human nature or how people make decisions. Many of them seem to want to assume that human beings are rational agents who make decisions independently of one another concerning their respective self-interests.

"The brains of these economists must have been exposed, for an excessive period of time, to the toxic chemicals required to produce their beloved widgets. As a result, their neurological functioning seems to have become impaired in rather significant ways.

"Even if agreement could be reached on what being a rational agent entails, these rationally- challenged economists seem to have missed the obvious. Marketing and advertising strategies are not about appealing to the rational mind.

"Sex, desire, envy, greed, pride, self-image, fear, acquisitiveness, illusion, jealousy, competitiveness, loneliness, narcissism, vulnerability, insecurity, boredom, and conformity underwrite the market, not rational decisions. Reasons are what we use, either before or after the fact, to rationalize the irrationalities in which many of our economic decisions are rooted, but none of this - including the rationalization process - is very rational.

"Moreover, we do not make our decisions independently of other people based on our own deliberations concerning what constitutes our self-interest. Many of us are deeply influenced by the people around us.

"In fact, marketing and advertising people count on this truth in several ways. These kinds of commercial activity are dedicated to influencing our decision-making process, such as it is, through entraining, shaping, conditioning, exploiting, and manipulating our emotional and motivational programming.

"Marketing and advertising people get paid the big bucks to undermine, and interfere with, our independence, together with whatever rationality we may possess. Through non-rational channel ways, they attempt to persuade us that wants and needs are 'rational' to have.

"By working on our herding instinct as well as our inclination toward conformity, marketing and advertising people induce us to seek what everyone else has. By operating on our capacity for self-deception and pride, these same people convince us that the purchasing of their product is an expression of our unique individuality.

"This is a marriage made in commercial heaven. Now, we can consume what everyone else does and, at the same time, sincerely believe we are exercising our inner-most sense of individual identity in doing so.

"Only in a very limited way does free market economics begin with an unmanipulated consumer demand which, in turn, leads to efforts by the supply side of the equation to allocate the resources entailed by those demands in the most efficient manner possible on the basis of feed-back information provided by exchanges in the market place. Most of today's market place is driven by the supply side's setting of an agenda, by means of various stratagems employed in sales, marketing and advertising, that create and perpetuate an array of desires, fears and delusions which stoke the fires of consumer demand completely independent of actual need.

"Although free market forces may establish the equilibrium point for bringing together supply and demand in the most efficient way as far as suppliers are concerned, this equilibrium point does not necessarily reflect the best allocation of resources as far as either the common good or the true self-interest of the individual are concerned. Suppliers, or capitalists, often have the arrogant and self-serving belief that what they wish to supply also represents the best use of the resources that are available to humanity.

"The theory of free market economics also is often based on the assumption of perfect knowledge. The theory assumes that either the consumer and/or the producer and/or the famous and mysterious invisible hand of the market know, both in principle and detail, with perfect certainty: what is in an individual's best self-interest; or, how individuals will respond to various kinds of dynamics within the market place; or, what constitutes the common good; or, which allocation of resources best serves both individual self-interests and the common good; or, how efficiency is, necessarily, the only criterion for measuring the health of an economic system or the society it purportedly serves; or, what the spiritual, moral, environmental, political, legal, medical, educational, social and international costs are going to be prior to the making of any decision concerning demand or supply.

"The simple truth of the matter is that none of us, including the infamous invisible hand, has anything remotely approaching perfect knowledge of the economy or how economic decisions today are going to effect us a few months or years down the road. In fact, the invisible hand is to capitalism what historical materialism is to early-Marx: fictions told to naive, impressionable minds in order, like some modern-day relative of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, to convince us that we will live in the best of all possible worlds when the presumed inevitability of the laws inherent in the free market or history are permitted to manifest themselves.

"Instead of petitioning Divinity for help, we are taught to place our troubles at the alter of the invisible hand or to bring them to the sanctum sanctorum of historical materialism. Anyone who actually believes this theoretical drivel provides more evidence for the teachings of Barnum than the teachings of either Adam Smith or Karl Marx.

"Economists while away their time, deep within their ivory towers, spinning out reams of equations based on impeccable mathematical logic and a lot of dumb assumptions that have virtually nothing to do with the real world. In lieu of any real understanding into the nature of either human beings or the true character of the common good, economists have created an artificial, synthetic world and fully expect that all of us should accommodate ourselves to the requirements of the theory or model, rather than that the models and theories of the economists should start accommodating themselves to real people with real problems that extend far beyond the extremely limited horizons of economic thinking.

"Economics isn't the dismal, if not dreary, science because of its subject matter. It is not even a dismal science due to the unnecessary misery it brings into the lives of human beings through its arrogant, ignorant and arbitrary presumptions concerning issues and problems involving the common good, human self-interest, rationality, the best allocation of resources, equability, and the appropriate criteria for evaluating the health of a community or society.

"Economics is the dismal science because it does science dismally. Only the members of the Nobel selection committee, and those who covet such a selection, could possibly consider economics as a science that has anything to do with laying bare the character of those aspects of reality which lie beyond the tautologically scarred, artificial and barren landscape in which economists would have humanity take up residence."

"Mary," I said, "I'm no fan of economics or economists. For instance, among other things, I don't understand how economists can keep a straight face when they wax eloquent about the moral improprieties surrounding the forgiving of the debt of third world countries, when much of the developed world's wealth is built upon the far more serious moral improprieties surrounding colonialism, imperialism and the associated economic exploitations that, historically, have accompanied each of these forms of oppression.

"Consequently, given my general perspective on these matters, I sort of feel strange saying anything to defend either economics or economists. Nevertheless, don't you think you are being a little harsh in some of your assessments?"