Neoliberal economics assumes that privatization, markets, and the right prices can solve all problems. Theories like this can be built only by excluding from consideration most real-world institutions and social processes. Yet, theoretical exclusion of most of reality from model buildng has to be conducted carefully, in full realization that results derived from highly abstract models are highly tentative. Policy statements derived from partial models must be cast in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. But here we encounter a basic problem of science and scientists. With economics, social science most nearly approaches physics in the natural scientific sense of the term. Economists become fixated on their own image as scientists, obsessed with the formal beauty of their creations, to the degree that the protests of millions hardly reaches their ears—riots against IMF policies, for instance. So, while any statement about the social behavior of human beings must always be cast in self-critical terms, economics is stated instead in terms of scientific mathematical certainty. Versions of economics that break from the fold are either denigrated as mere opinion or disciplined to return—not just by outside critics but by insiders expressing doubts about their legitimacy as science. Thus, in the case of development economics, the notion of a different reality in developing countries, if taken seriously, would have meant formulating a completely different approach with different agents in different—often nonmarket—relations, with different social relations—economics, however, calls this “anthropology.” Within the discipline, merely flirting with the possibility of radical difference is dangerous in terms of scholarly respectability. As a result, development economics has remained a mish-mash of basically conventional ideas, with a few precariously stated alternatives (like the possibility of trade favoring the rich countries) dropped, with relief, as soon as possible. Economics is handicapped by its socially restricted vision.