I've been quite interested in economic policy lately and was happy to come across a CBC podcast from their Best of Ideas series about Economics and Social Justice (transcript). Avi Lewis' polemic here is passionate and entertaining, though I would have liked to hear more about new economic mechanisms for eliminating poverty in the global South, rather than the usual Keynes-Friedman dichotomy. I found Pier Luigi Sacco's talk less conventional but more interesting. Sacco argues that traditional economic theory assumes a rational consumer motivated only by needs, but that the contemporary consumer is actually more likely to be motivated by the desire to build a unique identity and social status through consumption. We can call this the economics of identity. Sacco argues that the insatiable drive to define identity in this way will only end when we invest in our own knowledge, creating what he calls an Educated Imagination.