Robin Hanson wrote:
> Nick B. writes:
> >I want to go even further: I claim that there is a huge inefficiency
> >in the way that people spend their money altruistically.
> >There is no ruthless feedback system and no punishment for giving to
> >the wrong charities
> Economists like myself tend to resist stupidity explanations like this,
> because just about any modeling approach can explain just about any
> behavior if you put stupidity in the right place.
>
> For this case a natural explanation is that charity isn't driven by
> altruism; people *aren't* altruistic. Instead, people just like the
> act of giving, regardless of whether it helps or not.
Hmm... Then, how comes people never give to people who are richer
than themselves?
_____________________________________________________
Nicholas Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
Received on Tue May 26 03:40:26 1998
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