Moral (Tough) Luck

Richard Eptstein on Good Fortune and Good Luck in The University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog. He defends the belief that the poor and unlucky are best helped locally, through, presumably, individual acts of generosity and volunteerism, rather than through elaborate government programs. We might think of the response to Hurricanes Katrina as a case in point, where local action seems to have done better in some respects than FEMA. One of Eptsein's commenters writes in exasperation, "Income distribution is the undeveloped and failing portion of neoclassical economics and we all need to pull our heads out of the sand and address it." Another notes that our response to what works best may differ if we are thinking of sustainable Gross National Product over the next 100 years. Negative externalities like cancer, autism, and ecological collapse take some of the fun out of Green Zones and Gated Communities, even for the winners in this Darwinist (now Malthusian) contest.