[PEN-L:1792] Redutio ad Absurdum

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>"I do a little number in my Micro classes called "Pareto Optimality at
>Auschwitz" ... "
>
>Way back, I changed degrees half a semester into an education/economics
>degree.  Those who purported to teach how to teach couldn't teach, and
>those who purported to explain human behaviour weren't talking about
>anybody I knew - well, not then, anyway.
>
>Maybe I wasn't as lucky with my teachers as your students so obviously are.
>
>Maybe too many of us weren't.
>
>All the best,
>Rob.

I think famines work better--they make the point that if your labor-time
endowment has no value, then your utility has no weight in the social
welfare function that the market maximizes, and so you starve to death: the
market's equilibrium weighs each person's preferences roughly by the market
value of his/her endowment.

I think famines work better because starvation is not a willed and desired
objective of anyone in the market--while mass death certainly was a willed
and desired objective of those who ran the show during the "final
solution." "Final solution" examples leave people thinking, "yes, this
market-as-a-social-allocation-mechanism does indeed efficiently produce the
goals that society has chosen." Famine examples--I think, at least--probe a
little bit deeper because the market also plays a powerful role in
"choosing" "society's" "goals."


Brad DeLong