Thread by @willwilkinson, This is a good piece. But I find myself increasingly hostile to [...]

Will Wilkinson 🌐

willwilkinson

This is a good piece. But I find myself increasingly hostile to the economist& #39;s way of thinking in this context precisely because it refuses to admit trade-offs between incommensurable values. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-02/coronavirus-why-epidemiologists-and-economists-keep-arguing">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...

The Real Reason Epidemiologists and Economists Keep Arguing

They’re trained to think differently.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-02/coronavirus-why-epidemiologists-and-economists-keep-arguing

I think the way statistical value of life estimates get deployed to estimate the economic value of limiting mass death is intellectually, morally, and politically bogus -- even when I agree with the upshot.

The inherently political nature of human life is what it is precisely because we don& #39;t agree about what& #39;s valuable, about what& #39;s sacred, about what can be permissibly traded off against what.

Emergencies like this demand muscular technocratic management, but technocratic management is basically impossible unless you& #39;re relentlessly focused on maximizing a single variable.

But that means you& #39;re screwing over some people& #39;s fundamental values outside the normal political channels for regulating intractable disagreement and negotiating compromise. This is a cost, too.

Expressing solidarity with others who share our fate by agreeing to bear burdens that don& #39;t necessarily protect us personally and will never be repaid probably promotes a social ethos that has some economic value, but that& #39;s not why we should do it.

We should do it because we really are in it together, it& #39;s what we owe to one another, and it& #39;s noble, admirable, and right. If we can& #39;t see it that way, we won& #39;t get the material benefits that do in fact redound to this kind of cooperative, mutually protective social ethos.

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