Mainstream economic theory frequently starts from the assumption that people pursue their own self-interest. But that is not how most of us actually live. We care for our families, our friends and our communities. We also recognise obligations towards people we will never meet.
I call this economic empathy.
Sigh.
The Germans call it Naechstenliebe, we say Brotherly Love, all following Christ’s doctrine.
Define ‘brother’
Luke 10:37
I call that society, and the further out you go the less you care.
Especially when you consider the latest surveys (to the extent surveys are worth anything) show that only 35% of Britons say they would be willing to take up arms for their country in a time of war. Additionally, 48% stated they would never fight for Britain under any circumstances.
Why should I feel any obligation towards them?
I suppose it depends on the context but I can see why many wouldn’t fight for Britain. Some because they are foreigners, whatever their passport says, with neither roots in or regard for the nation. Others because they have been indoctrinated to hate their nation, culture and history. And others still because they have become so disenchanted with the decline of Britain that they don’t think it is worth fighting for it, in particular to defend its population of foreigners and self-hating leftists.
I don’t dispute the reasons, I’m just pointing out if they aren’t prepared to fight for what we have now why should I have an obligation to help them?
Until the invasion of Iraq, I’d have been first in the queue at the recruiting office.
Being 60 it is academic anyway, but there is no way I would fight for these traitors today.
At 64, I know that if I get conscripted it means the war is going really fucking badly.
When people say “take up arms for their country”, they typically mean against outside elements.
At this point, to me, it means civil war.
Maybe they would run into a burning building to save you, or dive into the sea to stop you drowning, or in any of many possible other scenarios risk or lose their life to save yours. Why is their willingness to kill others so much more important than that?
“We care for our families, our friends and our communities. We also recognise obligations towards people we will never meet.”
Its still self interest though, because people do altruistic things because they feel bad if they don’t, the old guilt complex. So we are gaining a benefit from doing something for someone else, the warm glow of moral superiority.
Any theory, like yours that claims that any action that brings a person relief from guilt or fulfils a wish is self-interested is unfalsifiable.
A theory that cannot be proven wrong by any possible human behaviour—even a person jumping on a grenade to save others—ceases to be a meaningful scientific or philosophical claim. It becomes an empty statement: “People do what they do because that is what they do.”
Tell our host that about his MV=PQ equation then. Or his theory that everyone always maximises their personal utility, even when two people do exactly the opposite things when faced with the same situation.
“A theory that cannot be proven wrong by any possible human behaviour”
I assume you don’t believe in gravity either then. I’ve never met anyone who could jump off a chair and float upwards, so presumably gravity isn’t real, because it can’t be disproven by any human behaviour.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that my theory could be a universal truth, that cannot be proven wrong, like a law of nature, or gravity. I’m not saying it is so, but such things do exist, and just saying ‘Well we can’t disprove this therefore its not true’ is plain daft.
Laws of nature are falsifiable. Gravity is falsifiable: see the orbit of Mercury, gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, and space travel. MV=PQ as an empirical theory is falsifiable because it predicts that: changing the money supply M will cause a directly proportional change in prices P.
Your theory aka psychological hedonism is not only unfalsifiable but also muddled. Just because an action satisfies a personal desire does not mean the desire is about yourself. If you run into a burning building to save a child, you are satisfying your desire to save them. The object of your desire is the child’s safety, not your own feeling of satisfaction. Getting satisfaction is a byproduct, not the ultimate goal. Moreover, we only get pleasure from helping others because we genuinely care about them first. If you did not care about the other person, helping them would give you no pleasure at all. Therefore, genuine other-regarding care must exist as the foundation before any self-interested satisfaction can occur.
“ If you did not care about the other person, helping them would give you no pleasure at all. “
So you don’t give any money to charity then?
Thanks Jim.
I did wonder why I didn’t give money to charity!!!
Another non sequitur…
“MV=PQ as an empirical theory is falsifiable because it predicts that: changing the money supply M will cause a directly proportional change in prices P.”
No it doesn’t, because V can change independently of all the other factors, so money can go up, but inflation doesn’t. Or vice versa. But V cannot be measured empirically. Its a fudge factor to make the equation work. Hence its unfalsifiable. Whatever happens that looks unusual can be explained by changes to V, which cannot be verified by any independent measure. Its a circular argument.
As it stands, MV=PQ is an accounting identity; and tautologies are not falsifiable. However, if V and Q are fixed or change independently of M, the equation yields a testable hypothesis: Changes in the money supply (M) directly cause proportional changes in the price level (P).
However, your psychological hedonism is neither tautologous nor falsifiable. It’s just a muddle.
One called almost say “There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate”
“We also recognise obligations towards people we will never meet.“
Example?
#RefugeesWelcome
I have no such obligation to see my country destroyed further!
Which prioritises people we will never meet over our neighbours who do not find migrants welcome at all.
Lie back and think of diversity.
Not vandalising a train that people I will never meet will use.
Or telephone box.
I don’t think they exist any more, do they?
I feel some obligation to help people less fortunate than myself whom I have never met, particularly those born with a disability for a start. I’ve probably never met them, but acknowledge that but for luck our positions have been reserved.
There is of course a firm limit to this which for me stops with people who are British and act accordingly. That prerequisite to “act accordingly” also rules out a lot who are nominally “British”.
That is as far out as I’m willing to go in a caring society: I feel no obligation to extend this to the rest of the world as that it a job for them and their fellow citizens.
I’m going to Ely today and due to some unforeseen expenses I’m feeling a bit hard up. I will knock on his door and ask for a few grand, no doubt he will have empathy and he will oblige.
Oh wait, he means it’s forced empathy by taxing and spending on what he thinks?
In which case I’ll take a balaclava and a baseball bat
You’ll be lucky to get a biscuit
“Empathy”. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Indeed. It does not have a value sign attached to it.
This piece is just beyond parody – ‘How do you find time for all this’
A reader of this blog recently asked me a question that I suspect quite a few people have wondered about:
I confess it was on a par with Fermat’s Last Theorem in terms of unresolved mysteries.
How do you find the time for all this?
In fairness it’s a valid question – talking this much bollocks makes me regret the pub ban even more – if you could pontificate in the Dog and Duck we might be spared it.
The answer is partly very simple. This is now what I do in retirement. There are no longer many other claims on my working time, and I also have support from the team around me. That undoubtedly helps.
And let me be clear: if I spent all day on a golf course or watching television, no one would think it odd. I just spend most of each day thinking and writing. People do think that odd, and I suppose it is, in that not many people choose to do it.
There’s literally thousands, if not millions of better bloggers out there – indeed the amount of better writers on my substack feed is in triple figures – extrapolated out, the notion that ‘not many people choose to do it’ is for the birds
But neither of those things really explains how I can produce as much as I do.
The first explanation for that is that I have been thinking about many of the issues I write about for more than 50 years. I did not start thinking about tax, accounting, economics, political economy, business, inequality, the environment, government and the role of the state when I sat down to write this morning’s blog posts. The thinking has been going on for decades.
It’s worth considering what this means. He has spent half a decade and his politics hasn’t moved beyond the level that many leave behind after their undergraduate years. Much has been said of the decline of shame and stigma in society and I have to ay I would find it embarrassing to have this lack of political maturity exposed so publicly if I were 70 years old.
That matters. I am not usually starting with a blank sheet of paper. When something happens, or I read something, or an idea occurs to me, I am normally relating it to an accumulated body of thought that I have been developing for most of my adult life.
I swear this is unexpurgated – it’s genuinely beyond satire.
In that sense, the time taken to write a blog post is not really the time taken to create the ideas in it. If doing so takes 50 minutes, then the time taken is those 50 minutes and the 50 years that went before it. What I am doing when I write is bringing my ideas together in response to whatever issue has caught my attention at a moment in time.
It’s true that some content creators in the digital sphere suggest it is all about quantity over quality.
The second explanation is that I have developed a methodology that lets me turn those thoughts into written material very quickly.
Usually, that starts with my phone. I dictate a note. It is easy to do. Every phone has the technology to translate the spoken word into text now. Nothing special is required. I use the Apple software on my iPhone. People try to sell me much more expensive options, but the Apple version works for me. Just hit the microphone button on your keyboard (bottom right here), and it will transcribe what you say:
The same method also works on computers and iPads. Android does have a version, too.
I usually dictate that note that rapidly because, once I know what I want to say, I can normally talk through the argument quite quickly. Dictation is much faster for me than typing, and using a reasonable-quality microphone reduces the number of transcription errors considerably. I usually use a Rode system. Others are available and may be cheaper. All will be better than using the built-in microphone. I should also add that I have been dictating as part of my professional life for more than 40 years now. Practice does help.
I guess not all the ‘advanced software’ which he would mandate the removal of on environmental grounds because he ‘doesn’t need it’ is to be removed?
That said, there are, inevitably, still mistakes. Dictation software misunderstands words. Punctuation can be wrong. Sentences sometimes need tidying. That is where I now use AI. I give it the dictated text and ask it to smooth the transcription, correcting the obvious errors while leaving my argument, structure and style intact. It is usually pretty good at that, although the result always has to be read with care. Some glaring errors might arise otherwise. I have trained AI to recognise my style. I had plenty of material available to provide the guide. That helps. There is lots of material available on how to do this.
From that, an article, post or video script follows, which might then need final HTML formatting and links added, if required.
The result is that I can quite often produce a piece of around 1,000 words from beginning to end in about 30 minutes, and sometimes less. I should also add that sometimes it takes much longer. I sometimes totally reject my own first drafts
I am often amazed at how poor the final draft is – if its been through some kind of editorial decision that’s almost akin to reveal one suffers from persistent diarrhoea. Truly shocking
That does not mean that the thinking took 30 minutes. It means that 50 or more years of thinking, combined with a methodology that I have developed for capturing ideas quickly, allows me to turn those thoughts into publishable material in that time. And whilst AI helps with the mechanics, it does not supply the accumulated experience, the argument or, most importantly, the reason for writing the piece in the first place. Those are mine.
It’s Chat GPT – perhaps AI regulation mightn’t be a bad thing?
In fact, my problem is not finding enough things to write about. It is almost exactly the opposite.
I usually have many more ideas than I can use, and I think there is a practical limit to how much I can reasonably publish in a day because there must be a limit to how much anyone might reasonably want to read from me. As a result, ideas are constantly being discarded, postponed or added to the list of things that I might return to another day.
So, when someone asks how I find the time to write so much, the answer is that the constraint is not the time it takes me to write; it is deciding which of the ideas I have are worth publishing.
I am guessing that our erstwhile host is grateful for the breadth of material, if nothing else.
The piece is an absolute diamond. The gap between his estimation of his intellectual capacity and the rather sad reality is almost pitiable.
Well, at least he has explained that for him speaking aloud is how he best gets words out of his head and onto paper. Though, as I’ve often pointed out, I would hate to be compelled to work in an environment where that is the required method of doing so. Not only can I get ideas out of my head via my fingers and keyboard a lot faster than using my meat flappy parts, but it is also near silent, and can be done in the presence of any number of other people also doing so, and while listening to the radio or similar.
Writing helps to organize thoughts. So in his case it’s clearly not going to be a factor.
Well, I suppose half of that is true.
It shows.
Is his next essay going to start with “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” or maybe “ This rich beef stroganoff, with wild mushrooms, is a delicious option for a feast with friends”?
So even the Spud now agrees that people maximise their utility and not only their economic profit and that most of us are decent people. Will he then realize that this means that there is no need for government to manage our money on our behalf?
Or indeed, micro-manage our behaviour.
See also – no fried food in school canteens, and monitors to ensure that’s enforced. Who goes to the polls for a government that does that, while not securing our borders?
Next pupils who switch to bringing in a lunch box will be subject to inspection too. There’s a business opportunity, provide lunchboxes with a false bottom for nice food.
Or lunchboxes designed to look like a textbook, to leave in the school bag during inspection: one “official” lunchbox that contains lentils, hummus and celery sticks; and a real lunchbox that has the pizza slices, crisps, chocolate and a fizzy drink.
Oo-er missus
Sadly quite a few real voters plus around a million or more from Karachi and Dhaka and points around whose ‘votes’ are taken by post – as part of a wider move to embed Sharia Law as the law of the UK.
He’s always at his most nauseating when he’s pretending to care about people.
Spud seems to have discovered that “self-interest” can encompass more than money and narrow selfishness.
That’s taken a while, for a Quaker.
He thinks self-interest is the same as selfishness. Brushing my teeth is in my self-interest but it’s not selfish. And my self-interest requires me to take some account of other people’s needs and wants.
Caring for our families, our friends and our communities ***IS**** pursuing our own self-interest. If we did gained negative value from caring for our families, our friends and our communities we would not do it, or at least, we would do it for a short time, then starve to death and /then/ not do it.
Not always…
Me currently caring for my elderly mum 4 days a week, with my youngest brother + son picking up the rest when they aren’t working … isn’t “self-interest”.
It’s “return on investment” she did when we were wee, bratty, and relatively helpless.
And a thing you…just *do* if you’re able to, imnsho.
Similarly I help out peeps as impromptu handyman regularly, gratis, if they let me.
And other Stuff… Some of it is for feel-good, some of it is because while I am “Officially Poor” , there’s people worse off, or simply a danger to themselves even with a safety screwdriver…
None of this gives me “economic gain” , possibly some social cudos, but that’s it..
But it’s *MY* choice to take it or leave it, depending on….
The Solanum, in his usual Magnanimousness, flips this around and tries to make the stuff I do *mandatory* , Because Reasons…
Which has my bile rising…
It’s certainly true that I have never met anyone more interested in himself.
Don’t be silly; Murphy doesn’t read anything that anyone else has written.
Why should he, when he is the fount of all knowledge and perfectly capable of inventing everything from first principles.
Mainstream economic theory frequently starts from the assumption that people pursue their own self-interest.
M.E.T. starts with trade. Parties exchange goods/services, to the acceptance of all parties. I.e., their own self-interest (they wouldn’t make the trade if it weren’t). The store wants Spud’s money; Spud wants a loaf of bread.
But that is not how most of us actually live.
Uhhh . . . yes, that IS our economics.
We care for our families, our friends and our communities.
So? He’s changing subjects, assuming his genius readers won’t realize it. “We care for our families” has FA to do with economics. It’s an appeal to purity, to pity, to a dozen fallacies.
I call this economic empathy.
Commie speak. Empathy good. Spud good.
Commie dick Murphy, “If you love your family, you will accept communism.”
We also recognise obligations towards people we will never meet.
Gamecock is stumped. There are 8,000,000,000 people Gamecock will never meet. Is Murphy talking about not littering? His topic is modern economic theory. What economic obligation is there? Paying taxes? I recognize I go to jail if I don’t. I also pay as little as I legally can. If that’s the obligation, how does he mix “we care for our families” and forced extraction of my assets?
Murphy thinks theft is acceptable if the money is spent on good things. Killing you and taking your stuff is acceptable, if your stuff is put to good use.
I despair for his sons. He has declared himself a first generation migrant recently by claiming Irish nationality. The propensity of second generation migrants to do horrible things is a subject that should be studied, but I’d rather not take my chances living near an incel and a latent holed up with a communist in Cambridgeshire.
How can I have an obligation to someone I’ve never met? If we recognized those then would that not mean that we would never have a war?
Another round of patronising drivel.
Whenever he trots out the “economic empathy” narrative it’s just the Fat Controller seeing himself blowing the whistle and directing everything from his state-funded signal box, as per.
It’s the same old crap over and over:
1. Manufacture a False Premise: Pretend the public are heartless, unfeeling drones who need a high-minded leader to teach them the basic concept of caring for their neighbours.
2. Play the Moral Arbiter: Wrap basic tax-and-regulate interventionism in soft, emotional vocabulary so that any opposition to his economic tinkering gets framed as a lack of basic human decency.
3. Grab the Levers of Power: Conclude that because everyday people can’t be trusted to run their own lives with “empathy,” Spud must step in, grab total state control, and micro-manage how every penny is spent.
Pure Machiavellian evil.