Re: Conservation principles

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 30 Oct 1994, Herbert Gintis wrote:

>
> 	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.

This seems a perfect statement of the pathology of economists' thinking:
honesty and competence are the exceptions, and self-interested behavior
the rule. As with most human phenomena, I think both must be explained.
Or, as Freud said in a footnote in Three Essays on Sex, not only
homosexuality must be explained psychoanalytically, but also "normal"
heterosexual attraction.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
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