Re: Conservation principles

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug writes:
>
>
>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.

	First, I think is we start calling one another names, this
discussion will degenerate rapidly. The term 'pathology' is a value
judgement and an ad hominem. Isn't enough to say I'm wrong, rather
than saying I'm a disease, and then saying my whole race
('economists') suffers from it?

	Second, I didn't say honesty and competence are 'exceptions;'
I said thay have to be 'explained.' An I did not say rent-seeking
behavior is 'self-interested.' It may be altruistic, and in many cases
is. The question is: why do the objectives of the decision-maker
coincide with what is socially desireable? The presumption is that
they do not coincide. Thus non-coincidence "is easily explained" while
coincidence ("integrity") "must be explained."

Herbert Gintis
Department of Economics
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx