Thursday, September 4, 2014

Goodness clashes with effective help

My experience is that having empathy and heartfelt willingness to help is usually not coming with an economic numerical attitude you the help efficiency. Sometimes even any efficiency thoughts seems sacrosanct to the good person.

Which is why so many humanitarian efforts are useless.

Which is why the good people are so objecting to include the incentive effects (and moral hazard) of social plans.

Absurdly, the current social budgets are over enough for what efficient plans will need. But never enough for wasteful inefficient plans.

It is quite possible that the sum of all current pro climate policies are way more costly than a carbon tax, while having near zero effectiveness!

Why good people don't like the math of effectiveness.

1) good people are the more emotional folks. They might by their nature be less inclined to engage in utilitarian math etc.

2) doing math when the heart is involved feels sacrosanct. Even if effective policies will help many more people, it is emotionally more comfortable to "be emotional"

3) a political effect?