The following presentation was prepared for a talk delivered on 16 October 2026 at the invitation of Labris Platform. The presentation treats economics as part of life and places at its centre the social relations that shape it. Drawing on examples from philosophy, literature, music, painting, cartoons and cinema, it examines how the market order has shaped the conditions of life and the scope of democracy, from the Enlightenment and industrialisation to neoliberal globalisat

In recent years, the proliferation of data-driven analysis has reshaped the epistemological foundations of economics. Vast computational capacity and algorithmic learning promise to turn uncertainty into calculable probability, and complexity into manageable prediction. Yet, the triumph of data often conceals a deeper conceptual poverty. As economics has increasingly become an empirical technocracy, it risks losing sight of what makes social inquiry meaningful: context, purpo