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02/14/2005: Liberals are from Mars....
Judge Richard Posner, in response to comments to his post on Social Security, writes
Some of these excellent comments put me in mind of the following crude but suggestive way of stating the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals think that the average person is good but dumb, conservatives that he or she is "bad" (in the sense of self-interested) but smart.
I happen to think that the average person is both dumb and bad. What does that make me?
To clarify a bit, and put it a bit less crudely, I think that the average person is considerably less rational than the traditional economics models assume, although I think the traditional economic model has it about right with regard to how self-interested the average person is, given how flexible the concept of "self-interest" is.
(I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which planet conservatives are from. :)
Brock on 02.14.05 @ 05:51 PM CST
