Bastiat is a problematic source on Pigou as he died 27 years before Pigou was born.

If Pigou made the political or moral point you say he did it is pretty irrelevant to his economics. It’s a fair debating or moral point that our property came into existence not just from our own efforts (sometimes we were given it) but also from the co-operation of others. It’s just that private property works so much better than the alternatives that I regard the debate as ‘theological’ if you will.

Pigou was happy with private property though his economics – like Marshall’s leads him inexorably (and in my view correctly) to the conclusion that redistributing wealth – at least at the margin – increases utility.

On socialism, remember that every age has it’s conceits. Like Veblin, Schumpeter thought we were headed inexorably towards a world dominated by engineers. He was wrong – Hayek, standing outside the mainstream of the time, was dead right.

On socialism, there are plenty of useful economists (and indeed classical liberals) who were a tad optimistic about socialilsm – J.S. Mill being one of them. It needn’t be a big negative against their economics which was focused on practical problems of their time (many of which remain for us also).

I agree with Ingolf on ‘happiness’ generally.

NG, I am worried about your constant references to Pigou. My recollection, which is mainly based on reading Frederic Bastiat, is that Pigou was pretty much an old-fashioned neo-socialist (literally, I can elaborate). Wasn’t his key point that since I couldn’t have made my widget without the wider societal framework, in fact my widget was as much the wider society’s as mine?

France is still paying the price for such stupid misunderstandings about the ‘right’ to wealth and the ‘ownership’ of one’s production – Ayn Rand, crazy as she was, made more sense than that.

I would, of course, love to be corrected.

Ken’s fear (existential terror?) of being captured by aliens and turned into a game show host (I don’t think even aliens could do it) leads him to be instinctively suspicious of the recasting of utilitarianism or old arguments about utility but with the idea of ‘happiness’ subsituted for ‘utility’. (of course utilitarianism began with the slogan the greatest happiness for the greatest number but at least in economics ‘ultility’ came to be the anchor concept.

Personally as I’ve said in the previous thread, I think happiness is a major distraction and it would have been better for Layard and others to explicitly go back to Marshall, Pigou – and perhaps Bentham though he’s got a bit of a bad name (though I’m not sure it’s deserved).

I think there’s a ‘horses for courses’ issue here (as they say in France – cullinary joke!). I don’t run my life along utilitarian lines, but if I’m thinking of govt policy it’s one of the touchstones – along with others like liberal principles. I don’t know of a better way to make public policy spending decisions for instance. But that doesn’t make me someone who wants to directly target ‘happiness’ with elaborate social engineering.

To suggest that such an individual is happy with his life is, however, to render the word happy meaningless. He’s AWOL, not happy, and one could only hope that good friends. perhaps, might help him to better understand the demons that drive him to seek some form of oblivion. And perhaps thereby find a way to coax him back into life.

here is a good test – if a single (i.e. unmarried with no children) individual wants to live his entire life stoned on drugs, can afford to fund his lifestyle, is not mooching off anyone else and harms no one else, should the State intervene? I’d say no. To me his revealed preference is sufficient – he is happy with his life and should be left alone. So this puts me in a sense on the side of the blue pill.

On the other hand, Nietzsche’s psychological critique is pretty powerful. I have always thought so. Perhaps there is a way to distinguish ‘utility’ from happiness? I have to think about this.

Whereas Hamilton, as all good socialists must, has exhausted of waiting for the hoi polloi to choose appropriately and decided that our betters (he) must choose for us.

NG, I think you are right about Nietszche as well, but surely Don’s key point is that if there is any evidence that we are ‘programmed’ for anything, it suggests that we are programmed for survival and gene-promotion. It is extremely hard to find historical evidence that supports the idea that we are programmed to seek happiness, or even eudamonia.

as for BBP2007, I think this almost merits having a winner – I thought much as KP did: eureka!

The notion of duty is in itself already the notion of a constraint of the free elective will by the law; whether this constraint be an external one or be self-constraint. The moral imperative, by its categorical (the unconditional ought) announces this constraint, which therefore does not apply to all rational beings (for there may also be holy beings), but applies to men as rational physical beings who are unholy enough to be seduced by pleasure to the transgression of the moral law, although they themselves recognize its authority; and when they do obey it, to obey it unwillingly (with resistance of their inclination); and it is in this that the constraint properly consists. Now, as man is a free (moral) being, the notion of duty can contain only self-constraint (by the idea of the law itself), when we look to the internal determination of the will (the spring), for thus only is it possible to combine that constraint (even if it were external) with the freedom of the elective will. The notion of duty then must be an ethical one.

BTW I agree with others’ comments about the post, and have entered it in my forward list for BBP2007. Like most great writing, when I read your post I instantly thought “Yes, of course! That’s exactly what the big problem is with Layard etc.” And yet I hadn’t been able to articulate it myself despite several stabs at comment box contributions on James Farrell’s post. Many thanks for helping me to clarify my own thinking on the subject. If James’ student takes all these contributions on board it should be one hell of an Honours paper.

Aristotle also argued that happiness is the one thing that is an end in itself but his idea of happiness — ‘eudaimonia’ — is an entirely different thing to Bentham’s idea of happiness as pleasure. Clive Hamilton argues for eudaimonia rather than the maximisation of pleasure over pain.

As I was writing about Nietzsche I couldn’t help thinking about how much it sounded like Ayn Rand.

I agree with Patrick – a great post.

One of the things that amazes me is the totalising mania of social scientists. I’m a fan of utilitarianism for trying to decide upon priorities in government policy. But that’s a million miles away from Layard’s nonsense (if Wilkinson’s precis is accurate) that there is some apex value to which we can appeal which will sort out priorities in the blink of an eye and the flash of a credit card.

Even in Govt policy utilitarianism is often inadequate and one needs to import ideas from elsewhere.

This doesn’t seem to be a problem in science where you apply frameworks in so far as they help you out and don’t get too tangled up in metaphysical delusions of grandeur.

Now there are some people hanging out for a ‘theory of everything’ but even if we got one it wouldn’t change the basic method of progress for most science which is to use little frameworks in different areas where they seem to shed light.

Don you’ve used Nietzsche as a foil to Layard’s totalising utilitarianism but of course Nietzsche is off on his own totalising mania (albeit one with vastly greater philosophical power and insight than Layard).

For at least some of us, and perhaps you are one, this kind of one dimensional thinking – however clever it is – gives us the willies.