Like old-style imperialists, economists assume that other people resemble themselves, regardless of their culture, class or background. Thus, they assume that other people will respond in ways that economists consider rational. They subscribe to the fallacy of an abstract “economic man” — “precultural” person. But, the authors write, people are not organisms first created “and then dipped in some culture, like Achilles in the River Styx. They are cultural from the outset.”