Civilized behavior (Davidson & Gintis)

["Alan G. Isaac" <AISAAC@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Herb, I do not understand what you mean by the need to explain
integrity. Do you mean that we need to give a sociological
explanation of how people might develop a taste for
personal integrity? Shouldn't we then insist on the
same kind of explanation for why people have a taste
for things that are in their narrowly defined self-interest?
In the context of thinking about government policy,
doesn't it make more sense to rely on our experience
that people have both kinds of motives and to design
institutions that are robust to this?
(I'm hoping you will not go so far as to say that if
we understood the institutional environment better we
would see why apparent integrity is really just a
manifestation of narrowly defined self-interest.)
--Alan G. Isaac


On Sun, 30 Oct 1994 20:04:48 -0700 Herbert Gintis said:
>>FROM:  Paul Davidson
>>...if rent seeking is a "cautionary (oops I almost
>>said Canterbury) tale, why has there never been any scandal regarding
>>Federal Reserve bureaucrats who could make a fortune by playing their
>>inside information on open market operations?  Perhaps there are some
>>bureaucrats who have a sense of civic responsibility that tempers there
>>own self-interest.
>
>	I don't understand your allusion to Canterbury tale, so I
>won't comment on it. As for the rest, the fact that there are
>situations in which people do not behave in a rent-seeking manner does
>not mean that they never do, or that they infrequently do. It is
>integrity that must be explained theoretically here, not rent-seeking,
>which is easily explained.
>
>Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx