Categories:
Behavioral Economics
Here‘s the full text of “Is Profit Evil?” Enjoy.
Here‘s the full text of “Is Profit Evil?” Enjoy.
Dec 16 2010
Bob Murphy has taken the time and trouble to explain and graph my critique of Obama's payroll tax cut. Nice work, Bob!
Dec 16 2010
I am reading The Symbolic Uses of Politics by Murray Edelman, a book first published in 1964 that is of great personal significance to me, as I will explain in a later post after I finish the book. Meanwhile, I thought I would pass along a couple of chance passages. First, from p. 92, The leader who makes no effort ...
Dec 15 2010
READER COMMENTS
ThomasL
Dec 15 2010 at 3:36pm
I haven’t read this, so I can’t be sure, but the premise strikes me as very similar to Mises’ the Anti-Capitalist Mentality (http://mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp).
E.S.
Dec 15 2010 at 6:12pm
This uses a small, biased sample to “conclude” that profit is bad…while the results of profits prove otherwise:
Profits rising all
[The video link provided with this comment is to “Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four” which does not have much or anything to do with profits, at least not directly. It’s a cool dynamic graphic of the relationship of health to income by country.–Econlib Ed.]
Ben Kalafut
Dec 15 2010 at 6:18pm
Two remarks:
(1) The paper is certainly interesting but seems weak relative to e.g. the Bolton et al paper in their references.
(2) It would seem to be in an unusual form for a scholarly work, starting from its release as a .doc file and not LaTeX or at least a PDF.
leading up to the question:
Is this what they intend to submit to a journal? Or is this merely for popular consumption?
Peter
Dec 15 2010 at 6:25pm
Bah at profit, as everybody knows Girls are evil 🙂
http://www.anvari.org/db/fun/Gender/Proof_that_Girls_are_Evil.jpg
[Yes it’s o/t but the title of this entry brought back amusing memories, forget when I first seen this]
matt rafferty
Dec 15 2010 at 6:54pm
Many academic journals/conferences accept submissions using Word documents.
Ben Kalafut
Dec 15 2010 at 6:57pm
That’s positively strange to a natural scientist. Thanks for the clarification. Any idea what journal they’re sending this to?
JC
Dec 16 2010 at 12:05pm
re: PDF vs. Word, some journals/conferences even ask for Word these days (I suppose it’s easier to edit and, considering the increase in submissions from non-N.American scholars, a more common format globally; though I still prefer the comfort provided by PDFs of knowing that what I see on my screen is what reviewers will see).
re: E.S.’s video, it does relate in the following sense…he (E.S.) seems to be suggesting that businesses and their profits are directly responsible for the great strides Rosling’s presentation shows.
So while people’s words and feelings may belittle the role and/or morality of profits (certainly, of ‘excessive’ – to them – profits), the result of the very thing they belittle is actually quite positively stunning (a world that’s healthier and wealthier than at any point in human history, and only getting better in both regards as the cycle – by which profits generate wealth and wealth generates health, which makes it easier to earn profits, etc. – keeps propelling us upward).
Culture and ideas (see McCloskey, Mokyr, etc.) really can profoundly change outcomes. Thank goodness – as a previous commenter on the earlier post pointed out – despite the clearly negative slope, the Y-axis figures are all above 1 (though the fact than none are above roughly 2.3 on a 5 point scale does give one pause; and what’s w/ Pacific Life’s low score – is taking care of widows and orphans not socially valuable? Maybe they’re lumped in w/ firms like AIG?).
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