Like Angela, I'll do my best to parse through some of my initial thoughts on Dr. Jensen's questions on human nature, rationality, and economic design. I suspect these thoughts are in a totally different direction than Dr. Jensen is planning on going tomorrow, but I'll throw them out there anyway.
I do believe there is a human nature, but what I think about its characteristics has been informed not so much by scientific inquiry as theological belief and study. That's getting pretty far afield from economics, so I'll keep the explanation brief: I think human nature is fundamentally selfish, though that doesn't mean all of our actions are wholly selfish - there's still room for decisions based on altruism and a desire for others to benefit, though most of our decisions and behavior are rooted in a desire to please and benefit ourselves.
As for the rationality and predictability of human nature, I'm kind of in between the economists (rational) and psychologists (irrational) on that. I think that humans are essentially rational in their decision-making, but that our rationality is fundamentally flawed. In a way, we're torn between two competing senses of rationality - what we want to do, and what we feel we should do. When those two senses interact, combine, and trade off, they produce behavior that appears at times very irrational and unpredictable.
As for the design of an economy, I think the proper response to this selfishness and conflicted rationality is not to resign ourselves to fundamental, constant selfishness and build our economic system around it (not entirely, anyway). That's a recipe for corruption and dysfunction on an ever-broadening scale. Instead, I think we have a responsibility to "protect ourselves from ourselves," as it were, and design an economic system that encourages altruism and the broader social good while also being realistic and acknowledging our bent toward selfishness. What exactly does that look like in practice? I'm not running for public office, so I don't even pretend to know. :)
I do believe there is a human nature, but what I think about its characteristics has been informed not so much by scientific inquiry as theological belief and study. That's getting pretty far afield from economics, so I'll keep the explanation brief: I think human nature is fundamentally selfish, though that doesn't mean all of our actions are wholly selfish - there's still room for decisions based on altruism and a desire for others to benefit, though most of our decisions and behavior are rooted in a desire to please and benefit ourselves.
As for the rationality and predictability of human nature, I'm kind of in between the economists (rational) and psychologists (irrational) on that. I think that humans are essentially rational in their decision-making, but that our rationality is fundamentally flawed. In a way, we're torn between two competing senses of rationality - what we want to do, and what we feel we should do. When those two senses interact, combine, and trade off, they produce behavior that appears at times very irrational and unpredictable.
As for the design of an economy, I think the proper response to this selfishness and conflicted rationality is not to resign ourselves to fundamental, constant selfishness and build our economic system around it (not entirely, anyway). That's a recipe for corruption and dysfunction on an ever-broadening scale. Instead, I think we have a responsibility to "protect ourselves from ourselves," as it were, and design an economic system that encourages altruism and the broader social good while also being realistic and acknowledging our bent toward selfishness. What exactly does that look like in practice? I'm not running for public office, so I don't even pretend to know. :)
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