Thanks for this.  The link to the formerly "Post-Autistic Economics Review is by itself a breath of fresh air.

Finally a generation has arrived equipped with a gag reflex whose threshold is set below infinity.  I wish them all success.  In "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" Thomas Kuhn observed that new paradigms often had to wait until the well placed proponents of older paradigms died.  And that is in scientific disciplines.

IMHO,in its Liberal and Neo-Liberal incarnations, economics is not even a science as it is axiomatic (see p.26 of linked work) and its underlying propositions are assumed. It is more like a system of theology than anything else.  It seems as though its practitioners, rather than  formulating a testable hypothesis, making predictions that could be found to either be true or false based thereupon, and then testing those predictions, rather behave more like fundamentalist creationists, who start with their belief and grasp at any conceivable substantiation.

In an opinion piece in the April, 2008 issue of "Scientific  American" Robert Nadeau, who teaches environmental science and public policy at George Mason University notes that the founders of Neo-classical economics, W.S.Jevons, Leon Walrus, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Paraeto did not derive from observation the rigorous mathematical formulations which were credited with transforming economics into a science.  Instead they borrowed them from von Helmholtz who proposed them as a solution to lacunae in Newtonian physics to account for phenomena of heat, light and electricity.    Other theories prevailed in physics, James Clerk Maxwell's Electrical Field Theory and Boltzmann's formulations in thermodynamics, for instance. Physicists and mathematicians told the economists that there was no theoretical basis for substituting economic variables for physical variables in Helmholtz's equations, but they were undeterred. This "borrowing" was forgotten and subsequent generations of "mainstream" economists accepted the claim that the theory was scientific.

Neo-classical Economics is essentially a rhetorical system, rather like a collection of "Just So" stories, that is axiomatic and well adapted to confounding critics.  If a student disagrees with the axions, they will not do well in the class.  Adam Smith's METAPHOR  of "the invisible hand of the market" has been inflated beyond all recognition to become more like the LEFT HAND OF GOD.  Tobin at Yale has commented to the effect that, after 200 years, if it was more than a metaphor one would think that the economists would have at least articulated some of the fingers.

The fact that Neo-classical Economics has been so successfully used to buttress institutions such as the modern corporation does not, of itself, detract from the value of the corporation.  What the undermining of the foundation of Neo-classical Economics could do is render features such as limited liability, executive compensation, shareholder rights and corporate ethics and responsibility vulnerable to rational criticism and to an effective analysis of the costs and benefits of these features to the society that charters said corporation.  Come the day!

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."