X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,SPF_NEUTRAL autolearn=no version=3.2.2 Sender: -1.9 (spamval) -- NONE Return-Path: Received: from newman.eecs.umich.edu (newman.eecs.umich.edu [141.213.4.11]) by boston.eecs.umich.edu (8.12.10/8.13.0) with ESMTP id l812MSux004009 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=FAIL) for ; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:22:28 -0400 Received: from holes.mr.itd.umich.edu (mx.umich.edu [141.211.14.137]) by newman.eecs.umich.edu (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id l812Lq6P019912 for ; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:22:00 -0400 Received: FROM edinburgh.eecs.umich.edu (edinburgh.eecs.umich.edu [141.213.4.27]) BY holes.mr.itd.umich.edu ID 46D8CCAC.8C2C3.3514 ; 31 Aug 2007 22:21:32 -0400 Received: from edinburgh.eecs.umich.edu (localhost.eecs.umich.edu [127.0.0.1]) by edinburgh.eecs.umich.edu (8.13.1/8.12.9) with ESMTP id l812LgPI016816; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:21:42 -0400 Received: from localhost (jmickens Æ localhost) by edinburgh.eecs.umich.edu (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) with ESMTP id l812Lf2Y016813; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:21:41 -0400 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.2 (2007-07-23) on newman.eecs.umich.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.91.2, clamav-milter version 0.91.2 on newman.eecs.umich.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:21:41 -0400 (EDT) To: Daniel Reeves cc: Dave Morris , improvetheworld Æ umich.edu, Steven Reeves , reeves-hayos Æ umich.edu, reeves-kalkman Æ umich.edu From: James W Mickens Subject: Re: mind the gap > You're characterizing our disagreement as hinging on whether public > policy should optimize economics subject to moral constraints or > optimize morality subject to economic constraints. I'm unclear on what > either of those really mean for public policy. There's a difference in the intent of your policy and the methods that you will use to evaluate it. For example, suppose that you've devised a new tax code for an underdeveloped country. When you evaluate its success, will you look at how much additional wealth it generated, or some actual measure of utility such as the percentage of citizens who have access to electricity or clean water? I use the term "actual measure of utility" because I think that just examining, say, the increase in GDP is a bad way to measure net social welfare. The net wealth of a society is, at best, an indirect measure of its net welfare because aggregate wealth trends tell us nothing about the *distribution* of wealth or whether that wealth is being used to satisfy some particular goal. The classic example is health care. Despite rising levels of aggregate wealth in America, many *individual* Americans have poor health and inadequate access to proper medical care. Is the solution to this problem the creation of even more wealth in the hope that the health care industry will spontaneously reorganize? Or is the solution a targeted policy, whether it be nationalized health care, better health education in schools, and/or something else? I argue that the latter approach would be better, particularly since the market has thus far been ineffective in addressing this issue. The failure of wealth-driven policies is even more obvious in the international pharmaceutical market, where drug companies develop medicines for diseases that affluent people care about (e.g., restless leg syndrome, diabetes) and ignore a huge number of illnesses (e.g., diarrheal diseases) that affect a much larger number of people who have much less money. People who care about net welfare should find this problematic. So, in the international drug market, should we pursue wealth-driven or morality-driven policies? In other words, should we allow drug companies to maximize their profits and hope that they'll turn a charitable eye towards the developing world, or should we force them through regulation, subsidies, tax credits, etc., to address the needs of poorer countries? History suggests that the former strategy will fail if you're trying to optimize for health and not profit. I understand that it is extremely expensive to develop new drugs and that pharmaceutical companies must be given a way to recoup these costs. However, it's obvious that a market system which focuses on maximizing their profits will not lead to a net increase in global health (an important utility metric). > Let me first defend Graham's point. He concedes whole classes of > exceptions and I think social injustices are included, if not > explicitly. His argument -- that income inequality is not, inherently, > unjust -- remains intact. Once again, I'm claiming that economic justness does not equal moral justness. When you say that income inequality is "not inherently unjust," you should specify whether you refer to the economic definition, the moral definition, or both. If Graham includes social injustice in his exceptions list, then I suppose that he and I are in agreement. But if Graham believes in the entrenched, pervasive nature of social injustice, why does he spend so much time waxing poetic about the inherent fairness of economic inequality? This fairness only exists in an idealized model of the economy which bears little resemblance to the real one. The fact that Graham spends most of his time talking about this idealized world suggests that either a) he is a hopeless utopian, or b) he does not, in fact, believe that social injustice is entrenched and pervasive ;-). ~j p.s. > And just to nip a potential subthread: the non-mathematically inclined > are not allowed to blithely declare human motivation to be irreducible > to mathematics. Ah, but I claim that the mathematically inclined are not allowed to blithely declare that human motivation *is* reducible to mathematics ;-). The reason that I do not use yootles to determine who will pick me up from the airport is that, in the common case, this decision is not subject to rigorous mathematical or economic constraints, nor should it be. In many scenarios, I only care about approximate notions of fairness. I suppose that if gasoline were $27,000 a gallon, it might be reasonable to employ a strong mathematical framework to prevent tragedy (e.g., "Oh no, Todd has taken me to the airport fifteen times but I haven't taken him at all. Todd has now spent $405,000 on gas while I have escaped scot-free."). Absent such extreme conditions, the introduction of mathematics into simple human transactions will often just add overhead and produce little tangible benefit. It is frequently possible and fruitful to analyze people's behavior using mathematical models. However, that doesn't mean that the underlying psychology of the individual is actually driven by these models, or that giving the math to people will make it easier for them to manage their lives.