Economics built its models around a person who has never actually existed

Classical economic theory often assumes 'homo economicus': a perfectly rational person with complete information and interests that boil down to pure self-interest. Real people are nothing like this, as behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky spent decades demonstrating. Critics argue the model's abstraction is still useful for tractable theories, but that treating it as a literal description of behavior has led economics astray on everything from bubbles to everyday decisions.

— Classical and neoclassical economic theory; critiqued by behavioral economists, Homo Economicus — Term traced to 19th-century critiques of Mill's and Ricardo's economic theory