(snip)
>
> Bissell here:
> Let me get this straight; the only way *not* to lose the opportunity
> costs (sunk) is to do nothing? If we do nothing where is the money?
> See
> the cat, see the cradle?
Steve replies: Ahh. The problem is that the costs are not monetary.
Suppose I come over and talk to you for 2 hours about something you have
zero interest in, but you are too nice to say, "Steve this does not
interest me in the least and I have more important things to do...".
Have you incurred a cost putting up with my 2 hours of blabbering?
I say you have, you say you haven't.
Steve
Bissell here: That makes even less sense. Lomborg is saying that the
$350 billion on Kyoto is wasted because it is 'better' to spend it
elsewhere and now you are saying that you can call opportunity costs
time, money, whatever. When I was an undergraduate a professor of mine
said that if you put all the economists in the world end-to-end they
would fail to reach a conclusion. I'm beginning to see how that works:
now matter what I say, you get to change the conditions. (I'm smiling
BTW).
Economist: How much is fly fishing worth?
Me: Well, as a fly fisherman I'd have to say there is no way to estimate
that.
Economist: If you don't take a guess I'll kill your son.
Me: Geez, in that case I'll try.
Economist: No need, we have now 'scientifically' established the value
of fly fishing as the life of one male child.
Me: That's ridiculous!
Economist: Don't blame me, you're the one who said it.
There may be some value in thinking about opportunity costs at the stage
of consideration of alternatives to action, but not once the action is
initiated. At that stage it becomes an exercise in obfuscation. Let me
try to put this is an ethical framework. I routinely carry about US$10
in my pocket in $1 bills. I do this to have something to give
panhandlers on the street when they 'spare change' me. Is it 'better'
for me to give my $10 per week out in $1 segments to individuals or
would it be 'better' to donate US$40/mo to an environmental cause to
support the Kyoto protocol? Sounds reasonable, but in truth it is
meaningless. I won't go into the reasons why I give out $40/mo to
panhandlers in $1 increments, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with
the reasons I give or don't give money to environmental causes. Sure the
$40 I give to street people is 'lost' to environmental causes, but I
have not made any ethical mistake one way or another. The two issues are
not related in any real, meaningful way and just because economist want
to say that it is doesn't make it so.
Pardon my rant on this, but the intellectual history of economics is in
moral philosophy. I have felt for many years that concepts such as
'opportunity' costs and 'sunk' costs and such are efforts by economists
to rid themselves of moral reasoning. Economics suffers even more than
other social sciences from 'physics envy;' the need to quantify even at
the expense of logic.
Steven
Nothing is true, all is permitted, nothing
is true, all is permitted, nothing is true,
all is permitted, nothing is true. . .
The Adventures of Omar Khyyam
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