“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
an empathetic society is a cooperative society, a socialist society.
capitalism is completely indifferent to the human factor, competition is about few winners and many losers. unemployment is desirable, poor people must be allowed to die.
people think economics is a science but it doesn’t consider human nature, “everyone tries to maximize their personal profit” isn’t an anthropological statement it’s capitalism restated.
people think economics is a science but it doesn’t consider human nature
That’s literally the whole field of behavioral economics.
Also, economists don’t care about individual human behavior. That’s not what economics is. Economics is the study of broad trends in large populations. And for the most part, modeling these trends as people trying to maximize their own utility function is a useful tool to explain things.
Also also, the point of science is to be measureable and falsifiable so that hypotheses can be tested and disproven, making the predictions of the field more accurate over time. Economists create falsifiable hypotheses. Often they are disproven. Economics gets better at modelling the real world over time. Economics is a science.
Behavioral economics isn’t how we allocate our resources, it’s a correction of classical economics to include the human factor. The assumption that everyone is a perfectly rational profit optimizer only reflects reality insofar as we’ve codified that behavior into our laws and regulations such that shareholders can sue companies for not acting in that assumed way.
The kind of economics people take as science don’t describe human populations throughout history.
This is borderline using genetic arguments, ironic for Nazis. If people have learned to suppress their feelings the incapacity can be strong but is not genuine.
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
– Gustave Gilbert (After interviewing Nazis post-WWII)
If you want to understand evil you’ll need to observe it in yourself. Secondhand observations will not do.
a lack of empathy isn’t the source of corruption, money is. a lack of empathy is just a necessary pre-requisite.
an empathetic society is a cooperative society, a socialist society.
capitalism is completely indifferent to the human factor, competition is about few winners and many losers. unemployment is desirable, poor people must be allowed to die.
people think economics is a science but it doesn’t consider human nature, “everyone tries to maximize their personal profit” isn’t an anthropological statement it’s capitalism restated.
That’s literally the whole field of behavioral economics.
Also, economists don’t care about individual human behavior. That’s not what economics is. Economics is the study of broad trends in large populations. And for the most part, modeling these trends as people trying to maximize their own utility function is a useful tool to explain things.
Also also, the point of science is to be measureable and falsifiable so that hypotheses can be tested and disproven, making the predictions of the field more accurate over time. Economists create falsifiable hypotheses. Often they are disproven. Economics gets better at modelling the real world over time. Economics is a science.
“All models are wrong; some are useful.”
Behavioral economics isn’t how we allocate our resources, it’s a correction of classical economics to include the human factor. The assumption that everyone is a perfectly rational profit optimizer only reflects reality insofar as we’ve codified that behavior into our laws and regulations such that shareholders can sue companies for not acting in that assumed way.
The kind of economics people take as science don’t describe human populations throughout history.
This is borderline using genetic arguments, ironic for Nazis. If people have learned to suppress their feelings the incapacity can be strong but is not genuine.