Soros will recuse himself from the policy deliberations because he is a proponent of Reflexivity, an economic theory that he espouses as an alternative to much of mainstream economic thinking today, and he wants the Institute to evaluate reflexivity along with other economic systems. Soros added,

"While I hope reflexivity will be one of the concepts examined, there are numerous alternatives to the prevailing dogma that must be explored."

Soros is among a growing number of academics, financiers, scientists, and, yes, even economists, who are questioning the unproven assumptions of classical economics. For a series of interesting rants about modern economics, try some of the following:

"Economists enamored of pure markets begin with the theory, and hang models on assumptions that cannot themselves be challenged. The characteristic grammatical usage is an unusual subjunctive -- the verb form 'must be.' For example, if wages for manual workers are declining, it must be that their economic value is declining. If a corporate raider walks away from a deal with half a billion dollars, it must be that he added that much value to the economy. If Japan can produce better autos than Detroit, there must be some inherent locational logic, else the market would not dictate that result. If commercial advertising leads consumers to buy shoddy or harmful products, they must be 'maximizing their utility' -- because we know by assumption that consumers always maximize their utility. How do we know that? Because to do anything else would be irrational. And how do we know that individuals always behave rationally? Because that is the premise from which we begin. The truly interesting institutional questions -- the disjunctures between what free-market assumptions would predict and the actual outcomes -- are dismissed by the tautological and deductive form of reasoning. The fact that the real world is already far from a perfect market is ignored for the sake of theoretic convenience. The dissenter cannot challenge the theory; he can only describe the real world."

Of course, such challenges to American-style, dog-eat-dog capitalism will not go unanswered by those who espouse the current system because they stand to lose so much in the process. That simple fact underlies so much of the manufactured Astroturf movement of late. As the results of unrestrained capitalism continue to manifest themselves in ever greater economic dislocation over the next couple of years, watch for greater numbers of thoughtful people like Soros begin to have a much greater influence on the debate about the merits of our current economic thinking.