An interesting review/summary of the new book by
"Just as privatised medicine leads to the over-treatment of the rich and under-treatment of the poor, private schools over-educate the rich. This leads to many of them being educated beyond their intelligence."
---Zoe Williams.
Two questions: what is the appropriate distributive principle (priority to the least well-off, Utilitarianism, etc., etc) and what is the relevant 'evaluative space' (what, exactly, is meant by 'well-off' and how does this relate to other things we value, such a freedom, efficiency, fairness...)?
Acemoglu et al produce some interesting work but ultimately you have to ask yourself if there isn't something odd about explaining history through "origins" (or initial conditions: path dependence). Furthermore, one has to wonder if a great distortion to our understanding doesn't follow from the manner in which economists both try to fit historical events into their framework of rational choice theory and from their desire to reduce the set of human motivations down to the bare minimum, as if to say: the springs of action can be narrowed down to one fundamental, tightly wound coil.
