Class Discussion Continued

I would just like to make a few points on the discussion we were having in class.
As we were talking about cultural diversity, good environment, health, education and so on, comments were made on the realm of economics, and how economists should not be concerned with these things because economics is about money.

Is the study of economics not a study of the way our world deals with its problems? If this is indeed the case, it implies that we learn from these mistakes, taking them into account as we create models for dictating how one should act when future problems arise. Naturally, we must then place values on certain things in order to have a goal for the models to achieve. The problem is then that we have placed value precisely on that; things. Material things. There is an 'under-allocation' of value towards the finer things in life, as outlined when we talked about the short-comings of GDP.
This certainly does not make the study of economics redundant, but merely temporarily lost. Lost in the sense that we have lost sight of what is really important to us, what we truly value. Let's face it, the way economics has placed value on money and profits has led to increasingly Machiavellian and deceptive ways of living, the exact opposite of those virtues we used to value. Paradoxically, therefore, the more the present economic theories are used to maximize profits, the more the integrity of the study of economics is undermined.
In other words, no study of any sort should find good in a system such as "[t]he modern private enterprise system [which] ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and envy as its motive power," (Schumacher) such as we see today.

Needless to say, as a social study, economics studies society and the world around us. However, that does then not mean that we should only perceive the world in terms of economics, and economics today connotes profit maximization. Perhaps economics should find a new direction and set of values by learning from Aristotle's idea of metaphysics, cultural and religious values and human and physical geography.