Russ Roberts: belief

Transcript context

…From my point of view, it’s utilitarian. I’m asking you; I’m not insisting you take my point of view. Living in Israel, has it made you more or less utilitarian? I’m not much of a utilitarian. I think all of us have some utilitarian impulses in the certain cases where it’s overwhelmingly clear that too many people benefit from something, or the size of it’s so large. I think in most of the interesting cases, I think our profession has been so damaged overall by professional economics, by the Benthamite calculus. I went back and read — went back, I hadn’t read it before — I went and read Bentham in the last year. Have you read any Bentham? Of course. I’m a big Bentham fan, though I’m not at all a pure utilitarian. Even on issues such as gay rights, or animal welfare, or monetary theory, or usury laws, or tariffs, he’s a fantastic thinker and economist . . .…

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