This is from a talk I gave in 2001.
Update: In response to Jonathan Bechtel below. For how strangers who are paid to be nice to you look awfully like a friendly community, see my post on New York.
This is from a talk I gave in 2001.
Update: In response to Jonathan Bechtel below. For how strangers who are paid to be nice to you look awfully like a friendly community, see my post on New York.
May 19 2012
Read David Friedman's latest blog post and the comments on it for his story about TSA. it turns out that there really is a noticeable difference between government workers in protected jobs and private firms hired to do the government's dirty business. UPDATE: For those who don't know what commenter John David Galt ...
May 19 2012
Ethos (Credibility), or ethical appeal, means convincing by the character of the author. We tend to believe people whom we respect. One of the central problems of argumentation is to project an impression to the reader that you are someone worth listening to, in other words making yourself as author into an authority o...
May 18 2012
This is from a talk I gave in 2001. Update: In response to Jonathan Bechtel below. For how strangers who are paid to be nice to you look awfully like a friendly community, see my post on New York.
READER COMMENTS
Joe Cushing
May 18 2012 at 10:26pm
Great talk. This should be a TED Talk.
Diego Ochoa
May 19 2012 at 1:03am
Great short video. It got me thinking about the incentives that capitalism gives individuals. Humans act to fulfill their needs and in doing so, positive externalities may arrive in which society benefits from. this might be a little bit of topic. But do you think that capitalism in itself has allowed income inequality to be regarded as a lesser problem in society? I ask this because the poor class from two centuries ago is much different from the poor class we have today. you mentioned, Adam Smith talked about the butcher acting in a way that benefited a third party, and it was not for the pure purpose of being nice but because that was a way to increase his personal gain. But who is to say that these companies are not trying to develope new drugs that will work better due to the purpose to stay in business longer?
Saturos
May 19 2012 at 2:22am
Of course, the standard left-criticism would be that it’s sad that all those people in Winnipeg who didn’t know you needed to be offered money to care about you. It would be better if people did things out of love than greed. Sure, it’s great when strangers are nice to you, but perhaps not so great when that’s only because they’re being paid to.
David R. Henderson
May 19 2012 at 9:29am
@Joe Cushing,
Thanks, Joe.
@ Diego Ochoa,
Thanks, Diego. I don’t know enough history to know how income inequality was regarded a few hundred years ago. But–and this is another part of my book, The Joy of Freedom, that I was discussing in the video–I do know that that’s why I don’t regard it as a big issue. If everyone’s getting better off and poor people can have today what rich people could only dream of 100 years ago–think cell phones, Skype, cheap travel, and penicillin–then I don’t care much about income inequality. That is, of course, unless it comes about due to government oppression. But then what I really care about is government oppression.
@Saturos,
You well could be right that that’s the standard left-criticism. But I’ve given variants of this talk in front of audiences that contained leftists, and I never heard them make this criticism. Some even found it eye-opening.
Jonathan Bechtel
May 19 2012 at 11:05am
I enjoyed this talk David.
I’ve never heard it phrased this way, but I think the central question behind societal organization is:
How do you scale cooperation?
I think anti-market types always pine for the communitarian model, but due to informational asymmetries and incentive problems it’s hard to scale the communitarian model beyond small groups.
But your talk did a nice job of demonstrating how markets do a nice job of enabling coordination among strangers.
Richard O. Hammer
May 19 2012 at 11:17am
Very nice.
David R. Henderson
May 19 2012 at 11:23am
Thanks, Jonathan and Richard.
c141nav
May 20 2012 at 9:00pm
David,
Loved the video. I also love your book. Yes!! I bought your book. It is one of my favorites!
ATF
May 21 2012 at 4:31pm
FYI, the entire talk is available online:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/167818-1
Comments are closed.