> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) > Subject: [PEN-L:11887] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap > I doubt that public choice right-wingers would have much use for Ellsberg's > Paradox. If anything, the paradox presents an indictment against any kind of > reductivism. As I understand "public choice", it is founded on one set of > reductivist principles, in opposition to another set of reductivist principles. Public choice applies neo-classical welfare theory to the behavior of public officials and collective decision-making processes. > The problem is not with the scale on which decisions are made but with the > nature of the decisions -- "utility" abstracts from some difficult to define > considerations in certain kinds of decision making. Thus Ellsberg contrasts Yeah but every theory abstracts from something. Whether it's important or not is another way of saying whether you dig the theory. (I've started rereading the Beats.) > the decision situations in which his paradox prevails to those involved with > familiar production processes or well-known random events (such as coin > flipping). Aren't the right-wingers arguing -- in contrast to Ellsberg -- > that there really is "no difference" between, say, personal consumption > choices and public policy choices so that the market is an adequate model > for either? No, I don't think that's right. First of all, public goods are different than private goods, and secondly collective decision-making is different from individual decision-making. The real application of the 'market' analogy lies in individual utility maximization, not in fantasizing the existence of organized markets. There is discussion of a market for political ideas or policies, but clearly the variety of electoral and other non-market processes are distinct from markets with buyers and sellers of non-public goods. > I would venture to say that "ambiguity" arises often around ethical issues, > so that any effort to repackage them in terms of "efficiency" is doomed on > grounds of both ethics and efficiency. The solution is not to distribute the > ethical choices and hope that millions of atomized, private *utilitarian* > decisions will somehow add up to an ethical collective choice (or, at least, > a choice "exempt" from criticism on ethical grounds). The privatization of > welfare as voluntary charity and the kind of welfare reform that is promoted > as "workfare" are two examples of suppressing the public ethical dimensions > of issues in the name of a chimerical private ethics. By contrast, the Right, though this last is not necessarily implied by N-C or public choice theory, which allow for collective expressions of empathy or altruism. A virtue of utilitarianism is that in its specificity it is more compelling than utter fuzziness, the edge of which you are skirting here. > ethical dimensions of the Vietnam war were suppressed in the name of an > overriding (and ultimately venal) "national interest". What is needed > instead is the foregrounding of the ethical dimensions of public issues and > a spirited, informed public discussion around precisely those dimensions -- > what used to be known as "democracy". Sounds good, maybe too good. MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 http://epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===================================================
