Preferences, self-interest & morality: economics & ethics lesson plan: Difference between revisions

Preferences, self-interest & morality: economics & ethics lesson plan (view source)

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 ** bringing those things in harmony, the constitution, the legislation, and the law, is a really hard, collective problem.
+Roberts:
 * problem of the found wallet
 * What does economics predict?
+** keep it and spend the money = "high level of utility"
+or
+** return the wallet so you don't feel guilty
+** = example of putting morality into the objective function, into the preferences.
+* Do I want to raise my children to not feel guilty?
+Munger:
+*  Suppose it actually is really expensive or difficult for me to find a person.
+** What on the margin that'll make it less likely because demand curve slope down.
+** Now, I don't know what the level is, but at the margin, it'll make it less likely.
+* suppose that I really and probably cannot get caught and there's $10 in it.
+** Then I'm probably going to return it.
+** Suppose there's $1000? Suppose there's $10 million in it?
+** Is there a price where anyone, literally anyone would not return the wallet?
+** It's just that they differ about what price that is?
+** Is there a different level at which all of us would say: This is so much money, I'm keeping it.
+Roberts:
+* Demand slopes downward.
+** Or, it might be to save the life of a child, like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread.
+** You know, it's: We all have our price.
+* And yet, when you tell that to people who aren't economists, they find it deeply offensive.
+* in economics, we have a term for this: lexicographic preferences.
+** It means I have certain things I take care of regardless of price.
+Munger:
+* E.O. Wilson, the famous entomologist says that we should understand biology, at least, evolutionary biology as a contest between two forces.
+** First, any selfish individual will always dominate any altruistic individual.
+*** So, you could call it altruism. You could call it morality. It's a big drawback for the individual.
+*** if we only were individuals, then the selfish individuals might very well out-compete the altruistic individuals and they wouldn't exist.
+** Second, groups of altruistic individuals will always dominate groups of selfish individuals, because we care about each other.
+*** And it's not just that we are militarily better.
+*** We are better in society; we're happier; we reproduce more; we're more economically active;
+*** we're able to trust each other; contracting costs are less.
+** any society has this tension between individual and group domination.
+* small groups, 150 people have constraint on each other's behaviors
+* larger groups do not, the sociopath can hide among 1 million people
+* Rule Utilitarianism
+** we have is a set of rules and habits.
+** there's actually just a few little sets of rules that we can choose among.
+** If you choose the one that's the best on average, sure, sometimes you end up paying costs,
+*** but you actually become invested in the rule that you've selected.
+Roberts:
+* the Pandora's box of discretion
+** you find yourself erring, making mistakes, doing what's self-interested, harming your reputation, doing things you're ashamed of.
+** self-constraint, of tying yourself to the mast, an Odysseus-like method of giving up freedom, of giving up the discretion in this any one case
+** you sacrifice some well-being, on average, because you know that the alternative is actually much worse
+Munger:
+* David Schmidtz book "The Elements of Justice"
+** Having discretion means that you're going to get a bunch of rent-seeking contests where people know that the better argument they come up with
+*** they're going to be able to win, when it's unlikely that the weak are going to win those contests. It's going to be unjust anyway.
+** And the second is that it's just a giant waste of time.
+*** You're actually better on average doing the thing that seems not as good.
+* Aristotle talks about cultivating a character in exactly those terms
 === additional notes ===