Comments on: This Week on Free Will: Stephen Marglin

By: Mike G

Mike G — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:59:58 +0000

I wouldn’t say “designed to lament the loss of community” because that seems to misdiagnose the problem.

It does seem to be the case that humans enjoy what Will refers to as thick identities and tribal meaning, but humans also enjoy a host of other things, from consuming sweet fatty foods to having good health to spending lazy days on the beach to gossiping about mutual acquaintances, and many other things besides these.

Choice and cost is inherent in the human condition, and therefore inherent any system — liberal cosmopolitan utopia or otherwise. The “residue of regret” comes from awareness of choices and cost. Perhaps the only distinctive factor of a liberal cosmopolitan utopia in this regard is that the system is most likely to support a population with the wealth and education to contemplate these topics. (Which I take as a good thing.)

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:31:02 +0000

Are we really ‘designed’ to lament the loss of community?
There are lots of people in the modern world who embrace individualism and cosmopolitanism without regrets.
This is the problem with biological (read reductive) accounts of human behaviour - they simply ignore the countervailing impact of our choices, which can change our beliefs and even our basic psychology.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:42:07 +0000

Title suggestion: The Marglinal Cost of Thinking Like an Economist

By: Paul Zrimsek

Paul Zrimsek — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:57:28 +0000

Kind of confusing that Marglin seems to be using it to signal the disconnection and anomie of modern liberal capitalist society, though.

How so? The house is located in modern liberal capitalist society, and the events you remember so fondly took place in modern liberal capitalist society. Perhaps the only source of confusion is your ideological ideas about disconnection and anomie?

By: Mark Koyama

Mark Koyama — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:19:13 +0000

Hi Will, I’ve written a blog post on Marglin’s book here http://oxonomics.typepad.com/oxonomics/2008/03/the-costs-of-co.html

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:14:46 +0000

brooksfoe,

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I feel your nostalgia. But let me be an ass and wonder what was there before the Jenness House. Perhaps the 6500 sq ft monstrosity will be the site of EVEN MORE warm memories that are also inexpressible in monetary terms. Of course, we can’t ever know that, so we have to have some other way of adjudicating the dispute, and strikes me that this dispute is proceeding in about the right way, however it turns out.

By: brooksfoe

brooksfoe — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:52:30 +0000

Okay. This is actually really interesting and odd. But seeing that picture on the front of the book sent me off looking for nostalgic childhood references on the Web; and what I discovered is that that house — the “Jenness House” — is at the center of a massive Cape Cod real estate and conservation dispute between an ultrarich couple named the Klines, who want to build a 6500-square-foot beach mansion on the property, and the Cape Cod Commission, which has taken up other Truro residents’ concerns about the development. Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote a piece about the conflict last August.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/opinion/26weds4.html

More recently, the preservationists seem to have lost some ground.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080212/NEWS/802120307

The final issue will probably be decided on March 6.

This would seem to be a good laboratory for examining how “thinking like an economist” turns certain valuable things that don’t express themselves monetarily - notably the value of landscape and shared history - to crap.

By: david

david — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:58:33 +0000

Really enjoyable episode, Will, and your confusion is understandable but not obvious.

Having not seen the book, I feel like much of Marglin’s argument begins, and perhaps ends, with a basic malaise about society–very much like Putnam’s “Bowling Alone.” I think it’s interesting that he casts this as an anti-economics argument but I doubt that will broaden its audience or appeal any.

By: brooksfoe

brooksfoe — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:18:09 +0000

Well, I had an immediate positive communitarian glow from seeing the front cover of Marglin’s book, because I spent the summers of my childhood in the Cape Cod cottage depicted in the Edward Hopper painting featured on it. Hopper stayed in that Truro house, known as the “Jenness House”, for I think two or three years before building his own more spectacular house on top of the neighboring dunes. I remember it as a place of extraordinary communal and familial bliss, with much shucking of corn on the steps together with family friends.

Kind of confusing that Marglin seems to be using it to signal the disconnection and anomie of modern liberal capitalist society, though.