economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates

The same could be said of its opponents; capitalism makes civilized life possible.

Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game.

Prices, including wages, are not "set" by market players. Prices come about as a result of buyers and sellers interacting. Sellers can choose any price at which they are willing to sell, and buyers can choose any price at which they are willing to buy, but a sale only occurs (and a market price decided) when the two sides meet and agree on the same price.

Customers are the primary driver of technical change. You can still buy a typewriter, but most customers demand keyboards and touchscreens.

Public choice theory is a discipline of economics that considers how political actors are influenced by incentives like anyone else.

In contrast to economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx through John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and even Milton Friedman, we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being.

I don't see ethics and welfare being neglected, but there are many new avenues to explore. In recent decades the abundance of data and software has enabled a boom in econometrics while Adam Smith had to rely more on intuition and almanacs.

We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people.

What other discipline tries to carefully measure what matters to people? How else could you do it, if not by paying close attention to how they spend resources like money, time and attention? The base of Maslow's pyramid is formed of goods consumed in exchange for money.

Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators. But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder.

The opposite of efficiency is waste, from which no one benefits. A concrete example of upward redistribution (not the result of government action) would be helpful.

Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty.

Social justice and liberty? These are political considerations, not economic. Indeed, this is simply a misquote of the original essay:

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty.