Sixteen Things That Make Me Squirm - More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg - libertàeprosperità paradossodisen paradossodiposner costopsicologico inquinamentoperfettista ilimitidellutilitarismo
Sixteen Things That Make Me SquirmRead more at location 2773
Note: Prosperità, libertà economica e altre libertà Il paradosso di Sen: meno libertà + prosperità Soluzione 1 i costi psichici non contano (troppo facili da simulare) Critica all' utilitarismo: dilemma di Posner + dilemma delle generazioni Soluzione 2: il paradosso di Sen ripropone in negativo il messaggio della mano invisibile: dove c' è inefficienza manca un mercato (tranne che nel caso radicale dell' autoreferenzialità pura) Previdenza sociale e future generaziono Fine vita: il caso Schiavo Utilitarismo: dove tirare la linea e quando abbandonarlo. Proposta: tener conto solo delle preferenze rivelate (no costi psichici). Vedi in merito la soluzione Friedman: libertà in assenza di prop. o danno quantificabile Esternalità e secchi bucati Edit
A scatter plot of economic freedom versus income per capita, with each black dot representing a country, is shown on the next page.Read more at location 2820
Incidentally, if you carry out the same experiment with political freedom—including scheduled elections, robust opposition parties, freedom of speech and religion, and so forth—on the horizontal axis, the dots look almost completely random.Read more at location 2824
Political freedom is, in my opinion, a good thing, but unlike economic freedom it seems to have almost no link to prosperity.Read more at location 2826
Cost-benefit analysis tells me that the world has too little casual sex (at least among the least promiscuous), too few people, either too much or too little beauty (because beautiful people are fun to look at, but divert attention from other people who would like to be looked at), too little inventiveness, and too many books. Every one of those problems can be addressed by taxes and subsidies, but only at the expense of a little economic freedom. That’s the trade-off that makes me squirm.Read more at location 2830
Suppose some people (call them “prudes”) cherish their freedom of religion, but not half so much as they would cherish a ban on pornography. Others (call them the “lewds”) cherish their right to read smut, but not half so much as they would cherish a general ban on religion. Then if you banned both pornography and religion, you’d make everyone happier while simultaneously making everyone less free. Would that be a good thing to do?Read more at location 2834
a policy is good when its benefits exceed its costs, with benefits (or costs) measured by what the proponents (or opponents) would be willing to payRead more at location 2839
Sen’s dilemma, which simply reasserts itself in the cost-benefit context. Suppose I’m willing to pay $20 to read the subversive works of Paul Krugman and you’re willing to pay $40 to stop me. A strict cost-benefit analysis suggests that Krugman’s writing should be banned.Read more at location 2841
(There’s no need for a ban if you can locate me and offer me, say, $30 to change my reading habits—and if you can be assured that I won’t just take the money and run. But let’s suppose the impracticality of such arrangements leaves book banning as the only realistic alternative.)Read more at location 2843
That’s a conclusion most of us find repugnant, and it would be nice to avoid it. One way out is simply to declare that “psychic costs don’t count.”Read more at location 2845
Appealing as that position might sound, it’s also distressingly incoherent.Read more at location 2848
psychic costs shouldn’t count because they’re too easy to exaggerate.Read more at location 2850
Another answer is that once you start counting psychic harm, people start training themselves to feel it.Read more at location 2851
Still, my gut tells me that psychic harm shouldn’t count. On the other hand, this is the same gut that keeps telling me to go ahead and have another brownie, so I’m not sure how much I should trust it.Read more at location 2853
When the Army Corps of Engineers executed a cost-benefit analysis of undamming the Snake River in eastern Washington, they factored in something they called “existence value”—the value of the psychic benefit people get from knowing the river is running wild.Read more at location 2855
Suppose I’m willing to pay $100,000 to wrap you in barbed wire and zap you with cattle prods, and you’d accept no less than $50,000 to let me.Read more at location 2881
But let’s add a diabolical twist: my pleasure depends on torturing you nonconsensually.Read more at location 2885
On pure cost-benefit grounds, I still get to torture you, and you don’t get paid. By a strict cost-benefit criterion, rich sadists get to torture anyone they want. That’s a lot more disturbing than letting Bill Gates cut down a tree, and I’ve never met anyone who thinks it’s the right solution to this problem. I conclude that nobody—or at least nobody I’ve ever met—believes that cost-benefit analysis is the be-all and end-all of policy evaluation.Read more at location 2886
Here’s another uncomfortable question for the cost-benefit practitioner: who counts? The answer is surely “everyone,” but that still leaves plenty of room for dispute. Is an unborn fetus part of “everyone”?Read more at location 2891
To apply cost-benefit analysis, you first have to decide whether the fetus counts as a full-fledged person,Read more at location 2895
Whenever we talk about critical real-world policy issues like, say, reforming the Social Security system, we are implicitly talking about our obligations to future generationsRead more at location 2933
do we want to consume less so our grandchildren can consume more?Read more at location 2944
The question is where to draw the line.Read more at location 3017
I am inclined to draw the line somewhere north of a preference for controlling other people’s behavior.Read more at location 3017
If we tax every spillover cost and subsidize every spillover benefit, then in principle the communal stream should run clearer. But excessive government is also a pollutant, and we probably want to keep that in mind, too.Read more at location 3024
Note: L INQUINAMENTO PRODOTTO DAL PERFETTISMO
