« Vaticanomics | Main | Thanks for bearing with me »
Assorted links
2. Robin Hanson's theory of academia.
3. EconomistsdoitwithModels, from Harvard; stickers are here.
4. The naming of Jane Jacobs Way.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 10, 2009 at 09:21 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
2. Finally. And of course Robin is completely correct. And, that most people think he's not is heartening. It is the same reason the efficient market theory is going to make me rich.
3. Damn. Scooped again. I love to say that about Engineers.
"My friend Dave...would pour soda out of the cans and bottles in his parents’ house so that he could get the cash for the deposit and/or recycling...Note that Dave wasn’t really doing anything wrong (unless his parents were prescient enough to anticipate and regulate the behavior)"
Of course he was doing something wrong. He was destroying value. Where do economists get this mentality? The older I get, the more I believe Objectivism is righter than bullshonomics, aka economics careerism.
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 10, 2009 10:24:07 AM
@ Andrew: I meant "wrong" to specifically mean "breaking a rule," and I had hoped that this came across clearly in context. In fact, the objection that you raise is exactly the point that I was trying to make- that a. there isn't always a correspondence between following the carrot on a stick and maximizing value, and b. you can't expect people to abide by the spirit of the incentive rather than the rules of the game, either because their ethics don't compel them to behave in a value-maximizing way for the overall system or because they aren't aware of what goal the incentive was meant to encourage.
As a proud bullshonomist, my viewpoint is NOT that people *shouldn't* feel an obligation to behave in a socially beneficial way, but that bad (read, value-destroying) things can happen when you trust people left to their own devices to make choices that put social value creation ahead of self-interest. The fact of the matter is that there is a distinction between unethical and illegal, yet people seem to be pretty good at blurring the line between the two. I, therefore, take a point of view that tries to deepen that line in the sand.
Posted by: Jodi Beggs at Jul 10, 2009 6:25:24 PM
This is amazing.....
Posted by: supra shoes at Jul 15, 2009 2:59:47 AM
