Re: People who think that "rational economic man" is sociopathic might find this a bit humorous

["michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx>]

At 23:46 12/01/2006, you wrote:
> On 1/11/06, Walt Byars <wbyars@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > From a list made for amazon.com by Levitt and Dubner, authors of
> > freakonomics:
> >
> > "Case studies by a pair of criminologists who prove that everyone, even
> > petty criminals, responds to incentives in a manner that is rational,
> > predictable, and often fascinating."
> >
> > EVEN criminals!?!?
> >

From one of my an old essays, "Beyond Rightwing Economics":

> The starting point for the economics of the right is the individual.
> This individual is assumed to be rational, always attempting to
> maximize his or her position. Thus, this individual selects a point
> in all activities which is his or her best point under the given
> circumstances. The American economist Thorstein Veblen described
> this at the beginning of the century as the concept of the
> individual as a "lightning calculator of pleasures and pains." It is
> the view of a person always "in stable equilibrium except for the
> buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another."
> For example, suppose the person is a criminal. As a rational
> criminal, he considers the benefits and costs of various acts. He
> chooses those crimes for which the benefits (all other things being
> equal) are highest. The lower the cost of crime to him, the more
> crimes he commits. So, if you lower the costs of crime (through
> provisions for parole, halfway houses, etc.), if you reduce
> punishments for criminals, you get more crime. Increased crime is
> clearly the result of the "bleeding hearts." (Of course, rising
> unemployment, which increases the benefits from crime relative to
> alternatives, could explain growing crime.) The right-wing answer is
> that the way to reduce crime is to increase punishment and the
> likelihood that the criminal will be caught. The rational criminal
> will then select a new optimum point. Punishment is the deterrent:
> we have here the case for capital punishment and expanded police
> forces. (It is also the case for torture and dismemberment.)


Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

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