At 03:31 PM 7/16/01 -0700 Dean Forster wrote:
>The name of the game is efficiency,
>the allocation of resources where they'll do the most
>good. To be honest, I can't conceive of anything that
>could be an alternative to the efficient use of
>resources.
Bingo!
Very often, the free market is used a synonym for efficiency, which I think
is the dichotomy that Nick was getting at. Sometimes, the free market
*isn't* efficient - and economists spend a great deal of their time trying
to understand these situations, and postulating and testing ways of
correcting them.
Still, just because the free market is sometimes inefficient, it shouldn't
be an indictment of pursuing efficiency itself. Thus, I must disagree with
Nick when he writes "when one treats
cost-benefit analysis as a final argument, that's as silly as treating a
papal bull as a final argument." Neglecting for a moment my personal
opinion of the papacy ;-), I think it is important to recognize that while
it is appropriate to argue that a particular cost-benefit analysis is
flawed by not accounting for all costs or all benefits - this argument
should in no way impugn the underlying validity of makign cost-benefit
analyses in the first place.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
We are products of the same history, reaching from Jerusalem and
Athens to Warsaw and Washington. We share more than an alliance.
We share a civilization. - George W. Bush, Warsaw, 06/15/01
