Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 322 of the late University of Washington economist Paul Heyne‘s undated and previously unpublished manuscript titled “Teaching Economics By Telling Stories,” as it appears in the 2008 collection of Heyne’s writings, “Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion (Geoffrey Brennan and A.M.C. Waterman, eds.) (original emphasis):

The first lesson to be taught is that when we run across a situation we don’t like – “outrageous exploitation of sick people,” for example – we should start by asking how the situation came about and why it persists.  What’s actually going on here?  That’s an extremely important lesson: for the dinner table, the conference room, the legislative hall, and the faculty lounge as well as the economics classroom.  We all have a tendency, especially when we’re filled with indignation, to begin with the conclusions and subsequently to choose the facts that will enable us to reach our preestablished results.  That does little to promote understanding; it merely hardens opinions already held.  It does not lead to learning.  And it fosters debate rather than discussion.  Doesn’t it make far more sense to ask why, if the situation is as intolerable as it seems to be, it continues to exist?  Social phenomena are not facts of nature, like mountains.  They emerge from the choices individuals make in response to the situations they encounter, situations that are in turn largely created by the choices other people make.  If we want to change society, we must first understand it.  The first step toward understanding how markets work, and the beginning, I would say, of all social understanding, is the recognition that social phenomena are the product of particular choices in response to particular incentives.  Incentives matter!  To fix any social problem, we must alter the incentives.  To do that, we must first discover what they are.

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