I agree with my colleague from AU: In a dynamic model with endogenous
preferences, such as spelled out in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics,
which none of the nasty neoclassical famous fellows has ever read or cited,
the tobacco companies would be seen as maximizing over time, which would
be by producing where MC = MR when all the future effects of expected
addiction are taken into account.
What are the issues?
Do the tobacco companies maximize? Yep.
Are they drug dealers who seek to understand addiction in order to manipulate
addicts for their own profits? Yep.
Why should there be any other issue?
