The Flu Preference
When I describe gastrointestinal illness as “an extreme, socially disapproved preference,” the most convincing counter-example people offer is the flu. Do I really think people “want to have the flu” or choose the flu as a bizarre alternative lifestyle?
My quick answer: These objections confuse preferences with meta-preferences.
No one chooses to have the gene for cilantro aversion. Yet people with the cilantro aversion gene are perfectly able to eat this vegetable. They just strongly prefer not to.
Similarly, when I say that those “with the flu” are people who value blowing chunks more than avoiding grossing out their family, this doesn’t mean that they like having these priorities. If they could press a button which would eliminate their desire to puke, I bet many with the flu would press it. But given their actual cravings, they prefer to keep vomiting heavily despite the suffering of their families.
Is this all just a word game? No. The economic distinction between preferences and constraints that I’m drawing upon has three big substantive implications here.
First, people with extreme preferences could make different choices. People with cilantro aversion are able to eat cilantro. People with the flu are able to stop vomiting. For example, an adult with the flu usually makes it to the bathroom before puking.
Second, as a corollary, people with extreme preferences can – and routinely do – respond to incentives. Although it hasn’t been formally tested in the lab, I’m sure the appropriate experiment would find that this “need” to throw up would be postponed more often in cases when the carpet is very expensive–thus proving that vomiting, even when you “have the flu,” is a rational choice in a world of tradeoffs.
Third, as a further corollary, people with extreme preferences can – and routinely do – find better ways to cope. People reshape their own preferences all the time; perhaps you can do the same. If you find yourself “with the flu” and feeling miserable, take a bath and a nap. Don’t just wallow in your misery.
* I’m well-aware that many physical symptoms also respond to incentives. You can pressure a diabetic to lose weight, which in turn reverses his diabetes. But all of these incentive effects require time to work. The symptoms of the flu, in contrast, can and often do respond to incentives instantly, because they are choices that are always within your grasp. “I’m divorcing you unless you stop puking right now” is a viable threat. “I’m divorcing you unless you stop being diabetic right now” is a silly one.
P.S. If you liked my analysis, you will also enjoy Bryan Caplan’s similar discussion of clinical depression.
IBC and the Business Owner, Part 1 of 3
I start a new series on our podcast with Carlos.
Potpourri
==> My IER post discussing my Fraser Institute study on the Alberta carbon tax.
==> I was naughty again.
==> I talked about MMT from a socialist perspective, with another guy who was also neither MMT nor socialist.
==> James Galbraith gets saucy on MMT.
==> Does anyone know about WhenHub? I’m looking for an alternative to Patreon. (Right now I’m using PayPal.)
==> Gilbert Berdine (a cardiologist here at Texas Tech) writes about Medicare for all.
Peter Klein Talks Entrepreneurship
And Christina Romer, Bill Clinton, and Israel Kirzner. The latest episode of the Bob Murphy Show.
Incidentally, especially for young Austrian grad students / PhDs, Peter and I talk about shortcomings in standard Austrian theory at the tail end.
Trump’s “Very Fine People” Redux
For some reason, this is a hot topic again. (It partly has to do with Scott Adams on Twitter. I think it’s because somebody tried to edit the Wikipedia article to merely add actual quotations from Trump–and then had them taken down within minutes–and he passed along the story to Scott Adams. But, for all I know the reason the guy did that, was that Scott Adams had first talked about it again.)
(UPDATE: It might be a hot topic again because of this article, talking about an exchange where CNN’s Erin Burnett hilariously says some guy’s defense of Trump was something he made up on the spot. Awwwkward.)
Anyway, even though I knew from Day One that Trump was NOT praising neo-Nazis, I never watched the full context of the discussion to see how OBVIOUSLY NOT. So just take a deep breath, and watch the first three minutes and 25 seconds of this video. Even if you think “I already know this Bob, the media lied,” I encourage you to watch it. As you’ll see, not only is Trump crystal clear, but a reporter (in confusion) asks him specifically if he was talking about the white nationalists, and he says emphatically no.
So again, just watch this from the beginning through the 3:25 mark:
Pretty clear, right? Now contrast that video of what actually happened, with Paul Krugman’s casual statement (and I just grabbed this as an example, he said this more than once):
I wanted to use a screenshot to capture the font of a Krugman column, but if you want the link here is the “news” story from the NYT to “document” that Trump called neo-Nazis very fine people. As you will see, the article by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman not only fails to mention the times when Trump explicitly said he was NOT praising neo-Nazis, but the title of their piece says his support of white supremacists was “unambiguous.”
What’s amazing about this, is that when Russ Roberts (of EconTalk fame) today tweeted this out, saying he hadn’t realized the media had misled him about what Trump said, half the people in the comments were like, “Yeah Russ, what’s your point? Trump loves neo-Nazis and hates black people, and that’s what the media reported?”
Jordan Page on the Persecution of Schaeffer Cox
The latest episode of the Bob Murphy Show.
Recent Comments