Homo economicus is very busy figuring out exactly what those dreams, desires etc entail.
We know about how their brains work, I know how to design reward schemes, job happiness plans, legal documents and so on.
We are paid, to act as economic agents, and to do so rationally and to the best of our ability, with the moral aspect of it abstracted away.
How many times have you heard of people standing up and saying "hey I wont be the lawyer who buries the immoral and indefensible clauses in the contract".
Not very often, I'd bet. Furthermore if people did bring this up, or even leave their job over it - we can always find someone for whom the moral question is not a problem.
Its very easy to get people who are rational business actors and dont want to worry about the moral aspects of their work. They just want to do their jobs well, get paid and go home.
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>Well, it will be fun to see them suddenly rebalance their "interests" when they are plagued to death, and it's their life and the life of their children on the line.
That's my point - people will "rebalance", but I don't see a solid path to avoiding that re-balancing.
This confuses the map with the territory.
The economy is built by actual people, with dreams, desires, etc, whose behavior is usually far beyond what the "Homo economics" would dictate.
Homo economicus is just a crude model.
>The cost of that externality will never get priced in fully, because it’s in the interest of people to pretend it’s someone else’s problem (especially when they’re people’s jobs and food on the line.)
Well, it will be fun to see them suddenly rebalance their "interests" when they are plagued to death, and it's their life and the life of their children on the line.