[e2e] It's all my fault

[Tom Vest]

On May 18, 2007, at 6:50 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:

> On Thu, 17 May 2007, Randy Bush wrote:
>
>> it's also very convenient if the benefit is gained close to where/ 
>> by-whom
>> the costs are incurred, a point often overlooked.
>>
>> randy
>
> Heh. That's the point squarely ignored by most of the so-called  
> science of
> economics. Every time they average utilities to derive some metric of
> "common good" or "utility for the society" or whatever it is  
> called, they
> ignore the basic fact of life that people tend to act in their own
> interests.
>
> --vadim

Thank you for the opportunity to revisit this.

Your willingness to dismiss the net effects of such considerations so  
casually is itself a textbook example of the "What is seen and what is
not seen" fallacy.

I'll won't hold it against you, since the whole notion is absurd --  
nothing more than a rhetorical attempt to push an interlocutor to  
prove a negative, which is logically problematic at best.

Offlist, I'll be happy to use history and empirical data to try to  
illustrate why some (not all) regulatory interventions are good (not  
bad) -- but only after you demonstrate to me why arguments that  
benchmark the real world against some fantastical, never-to-be-seen  
world of pure interests should merit any attention at all.

TV, eschewing the polemical forevermore after this