(Warning: I'm going to pick on economics again, but let me preface this by saying that economists are my favorite people in law schools after philosophers--indeed, some of them are even as smart!)
The most peculiar feature of economics--apart from its scientific pretense--is its view that human well-being can be equated with preference-satisfaction. I understand, methodologically, what drives economics to such a silly view: if well-being is equivalent to preference-satisfaction, and the value of a particular preference-satisfaction is measurable by willingness to pay for its satisfaction, then we have a concrete way to measure well-being, i.e., by what price people are willing to pay for the satisfaction of their preferences.
This is tidy, and makes for well-defined research questions, but as an intellectual matter it is so silly as to be breathtaking. And the silliness begins with the idea that preference-satisfaction tracks well-being. (We won't even touch the familiar worry--familiar even to economists--that willingness to pay is a problematic proxy.)
Why can't well-being be equivalent to preference-satisfaction? Simple answer: there are lots of preferences whose satisfaction makes people worse off, and this happens all the time. Why? Because people are dumb or irrational or lacking in information or addicted, and so on.
Case 1: Anyone in the grips of addiction will have preferences whose satisfaction (another shot of heroin, another whisky, another hand of blackjack, etc.) will make them worse off.
Case 2: Anyone lacking relevant information will have preferences whose satisfaction will make them worse off. Examples:
(a) John wants to be a professional philosopher, so he satisfies his preferences to go to grad school in philosophy and pursue such a career, only to discover too late that he isn't smart or creative enough to pull it off--all this time and effort has been wasted, and he is much worse off (if he had gone, instead, to grad school in economics, where being able to make a rational argument is not necessary, he would have been much better off);
(b) Richard really wants Mexican food, and so goes to a neighborhood dive, to satisfy his preference; he does not know that sanitary conditions at the dive are so poor, that the salsa is full of salmonella, and he dies of food poisoning two days later;
(c) Mona really wants to be a ballerina, but no one has the nerve to tell her that being six feet tall and built like an Amazon is an insurmountable obstacle; as a result, she spends years and years acting on her ballerina preference, only to meet with professional and personal defeat and humiliation;
(d) Jim and Susie, tourists from Idaho, really want to get a feel for New York City, so they decide to take an evening walking tour of non-touristy parts of Brooklyn, which also, unbeknowst to them, are non-touristy because they are dangerous and crime-ridden; when their bodies are pulled from the East River, it is clear that their preference-satisfaction has made them worse off.
These are stylized examples, to be sure, but a moment's reflection ought to call to mind examples from your own life where preference-satisfactions made you worse off. (And notice that we haven't even mentioned the old Frankfurt-School worry about the manufacture of preferences that the market can then satisfy, and what the connection is between those preferences and well-being!)
Since there is no reason to think preference-satisfaction reliably tracks well-being, there is no reason to predicate an analysis of social or legal policies on preference-satisfaction. (This is one of several reasons why Kaplow and Shavell's book Fairness versus Welfare will go down in history as the most ridiculous book by smart people ever written...but more on that another day.)
Recent Comments