As you know, I prefer Bentham with reason added. His concept applies to any unreasoning animal.
With reason, you prefer to advantage yourself rather than disadvantage yourself. (Or economically, you prefer to satisfy your desires with the least exertion.)
The questions I put to high school students become:
If you continually advantage yourselves, do you have a better chance of surviving the winter?
If you continually disadvantage yourselves, do you have a better chance of surviving the winter?
Then, natural selection takes a hand.
These are not absolutes. Some who advantage themselves will not survive. Some of those who disadvantage themselves will survive. But, as time passes it is likely that those who are left will be those who advantage themselves.
The path to greatest advantage seems to pass through trade and cooperation. Those who cooperate are more likely to survive than those who don't - "are more likely to survive the winter". (Conversely, those who choose divisive war over cooperative peace are less likely to survive.)
George summed this up in his "Law of Human Progress", which he said was "Association in Equality".
Inasmuch as Association was diminished and Equality (equal treatment) denied, so would Progress falter. Thus, each time barriers are erected to trade and cooperation, and while our legislatures grind out special privileges, so will our chance of a bright future diminish.
But, when will we stop whining about our circumstances - and stop the inevitability that is upon us?
Harry
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Ed wrote:
Whether prisons were designed as panopticons or not, they've probably become that now with surveillance cameras. So have a lot of other places, including city streets.
And, yes, I would agree that Bentham's maximize pleasure / minimize pain concept does underly the theory of utility, but as I understand it, that theory did not have much use in economics until somewhat later, when the marginalists (e.g. Jevons) came along.
Ed
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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