These are in my opinion the most popular myths of mainstream (neoclassical, neoliberal) economics. Comments, critiques and suggestions are welcome.

Note that most of these myths are also the myths of modern Western industrial education that generally fosters a sufficient level of ignorance in disciplines like philosophy, ecology, anthropology, history, music and other fine arts. In most cases, these broad-viewed disciplines help us see the complete picture related with big economic questions.

(1) If a company is earning money in legal ways, it must be producing something useful for the society, and creating new jobs.

Ignores many legal ways of earning money with huge hidden (social and ecological) costs to the society, like dirty mining/industry/energy projects, or industrial agriculture based on mechanistic monocultures.

A myth, much inspired by the “invisible hand” argument of Adam Smith, ignores invisible costs (negative externalities) to today’s societies and future generations.

This is probably the most central, most popular, and for the global finance/corporation/oil/weapon oligarchy most useful myth, which boils down to: “Every medium is right for earning money and power, provided that it has a legal and ideological cloak.”

Because politicians and governments can be controlled with money in our modern times (a global tendency since 1990s) along with mass media and mainstream (industrial) education, this in turn boils down to: “Money justifies everything!”

(2) Every country in the world can become developed to reach better living standards by following the same historical path of a developed country like Germany (education, industrialization, organization, technology, urbanization, modern institutions…)

Ignores military and industrial imperialism, global oligarchies and monopolies, physical and ecological limits of the world.

Erroneously assumes, there is, or there must be, a single direction of development and progress for every society in the world (racist Western ideology of progress, misinterpretation of cultural evolution, industrial & neoclassical worldview).

Living standards is also a very much disputed term. Societies cannot be compared or measured by living standards because there are different cultures and lifestyles. How can you compare the living standards of a lion and a leopard? For example, the concept of education (i.e. what is a good education?) can be different for every society and lifestyle.

Believing in this myth is like believing, everyone in a society can become rich by stealing from others. The money mogul of the village didn’t become rich because he worked more, smarter or more efficiently than the others, but because he controlled and monopolized strategic resources much earlier than the others.

(3) Let’s make the cake bigger (GDP growth) so that everyone can get a larger slice (popular growing cake analogy for economic growth).

By ignoring the non-monetary production of nature and society (through narrow focus on money and market only) erroneously assumes that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a good measure of economic production and welfare (mechanistic and monetary reductionism).