Professor Sam Bowles: “Moral Economics”

[@pun2pun]

Sam Bowles' is an under-appreciated hero and an inspiration. Nearly sixty years of critical writing about interesting topics that have challenged economists to rethink and expand our methods and paradigms and engaging biologists, anthropologists and others as well. I also just love the passion with which he talks.

[@Achrononmaster]

@19:30 more barfff. I like Bowles, and cite his work often. But a "free society" is a chimera. Justice comes before freedom. You are not free (collectively) without fair and just constraint on individuals. Lawless and anarchocapitalist systems are the least free systems. It is fair the demos culturally determines what counts as "fair" in freedom, but it has no meaning without a justice system. What counts as a fair justice system can also be liberally determined by the demos, but it is never a "free for all" wild abandon --- for in that sort of regime horrific Pareto effects take hold, the rich get richer. The US Constitution was good, as was the Declaration of Independence, which placed freedom, happiness, and liberty on an equal footing with justice: the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness are "unalienable Rights" which is a justice framework. A right is only guaranteed by law.