The authors question how a discipline like economics, which traditionally has gone to great lengths to keep itself “positivistic” and “scientific” seems to have had a few qualms about taking on such a value-laden abstraction as the concept of freedom. They write that the explanation for this lies in modern economics’ attempt to get away from the concept of utility; in trying to let go of the value utility, economists grasped on to the value freedom. The authors argue that the use of the term freedom in this way does not at all get around the problem of value judgments.
