On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 09:53:17AM +0100, Jacob W Braestrup wrote: > There are many other "forced" kind of competition, that we (thankfully) > do not consider grounds for redistribution - like the competition for > mates. (I think I have stolen this point blatantly from Nozik, sorry).
In fact, we do have laws designed to reduce competition for mates, namely laws against polygamy. Without those laws, inequality in the outcome of this competition would be even greater than they are today. On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 09:42:58PM -0500, Bryan D Caplan wrote: > Sure you can "opt out." Reduce your expectations. Settle for less. Are you prepared to tell that to the person living in the streets or starving in some third world country? Even if you are, I think most people are not, and you're not going to be able to convince them otherwise by drawing analogies with atheletic competitions. On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 01:34:10AM -0000, William Sjostrom wrote: > Graham Nash economics is my overly cute way of complaining about normative > economics. Economists offer *opinions* on who should get this or that: the > poor, the talented, the hard-working, maybe some combination of the above. > I still am not persuaded that economists opinions on these issues are any > more important than anyone else's opinion. Does it change the way the world > behaves? I think the answer is yes. For good or ill, economists' opinions do count more than other people's, on average. >From Hayek's "The Intellectuals and Socialism": The most powerful of these general ideas which have shaped political development in recent times is of course the ideal of material equality. It is, characteristically, not one of the spontaneously grown moral convictions, first applied in the relations between particular individuals, but an intellectual construction originally conceived in the abstract and of doubtful meaning or application in particular instances. Nevertheless, it has operated strongly as a principle of selection among the alternative courses of social policy, exercising a persistent pressure toward an arrangement of social affairs which nobody clearly conceives. That a particular measure tends to bring about greater equality has come to be regarded as so strong a recommendation that little else will be considered. Since on each particular issue it is this one aspect on which those who guide opinion have a definite conviction, equality has determined social change even more strongly than its advocates intended. (end quote)
