Human Suffering

Essayist Thomas De Quincey, in Confessions of an English Opium Eater, said:

"A quarter of all human suffering is toothache."

Jerks

‪"The jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or fools to be dealt with, rather than as moral and epistemic peers.” ‬

‪- Eric Schwitzgebel‬

Pack It Up

Even if differences in human behavior are accepted as having an important genetic component, society might still choose to focus on improving the environment. Responding to a 1977 comment by hereditarian psychologist Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) that genetic interpretations of a twin study on “earning capacity” suggested that the British Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth should “pack up,” the American economist Arthur Goldberger (1930–2009) wittily responded:

If it were shown that a large proportion of the variance in eyesight were due to genetic causes, then the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Eyeglasses might as well pack up. And if it were shown that most of the variation in rainfall is due to natural causes, then the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Umbrellas could pack up too. (Goldberger, 1979, p. 337)

– Jay Joseph in The Trouble With Twin Studies 

The Wild Words Of Keynes

“Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.” 

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” 

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.” 

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” 

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” 

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

– John Maynard Keynes

The Decent Drapery Of Life

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

 – Edmund Burke "Reflections"

The Sun and the Rain on the Stony Ground

In a work titled Christ's Last Disclosure of Himself , William Greenhill exposits the last words of Christ in the Bible, Revelation 22:16-17:

“Come. And let him that heareth say, “ Come” and let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” 

In this series of sermons on the given text, Greenhill is careful to explain who Christ is as the root and offspring of David, and who it is that may come to him and drink. Greenhill says:

“ Objection, but surely these invitations are in vain if a man cannot come when he is invited. To what end are they? Answer: The sun shines upon the rock, and the rain falls upon the rock, yet no man expects that the sun should melt the rocks or the rain should make the rocks fruitful. But the adjacent parts and fields have the benefit; and so, though invitations fall upon rocks, yet other persons may have the benefit.” 

The rocks will not receive the benefit, but the field shall.

– McMahon, C. Matthew in The Two Wills of God 

Stiglitz on Economic Rent

A basic principle of economics holds that it is highly efficient to tax rents because such taxes don’t cause any distortions. A tax on land rents doesn’t make the land go away. Indeed, the great nineteenth-century progressive Henry George argued that government should rely solely on such a tax. Today, of course, we realize that rents can take many forms – they can be collected not just on land, but on the value of natural resources like oil, gas, minerals, and coal. There are other sources of rents, such as those derived from the exercise of monopoly power. A stiff tax on all such rents would not only reduce inequality but also reduce incentives to engage in the kind of rent-seeking activities that distort our economy and our democracy. 

– Joseph E. Stiglitz The Price of Inequality

[M]inor tweaks in the economic system are not going to solve the problem… The underlying problem is the whole structure of our economy, which has been oriented more at increasing rents than increasing productivity and real economic growth that would be widely shared in our society … one has always to think about issues of shifting so that, for instance, just a tax on capital might be shifted, and a lot of the models have shown this would happen, but a tax on land, rents, would actually address some of the underlying problems. This is the idea that Henry George had more than a hundred years ago, but this analysis that I have done ... goes one step beyond Henry George. Henry George argued that a land tax was nondistortionary, but this analysis says that a land tax actually improves the productivity of the economy because you encourage people to invest in productive capital rather than into rent generating. Well, the result of the shift in the composition of the savings towards more productive investment leads to a more productive economy and in the end leads to a more equal society.

– Joseph E. Stiglitz [Speech in Paris–April 8th, 2015]