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Bruce Adelstein's avatar

(Proud Dad here). : ) Very sweet post. A few thoughts.

Even as a small kid, you were always good at asking questions. Your brother was always fascinated by building physical things, but you were more interested in ideas. He went into engineering, you went into philosophy, and you both agree on lots of things, including animal welfare. (But he is more of a virtual ethicist than a utilitarian.)

You've written about this, but I think you had a huge turning point when you got to 8th grade and started asking about the presidential race, watching the primary debates, and thinking about the issues deeply. And that led you to economics.

One of my fondest memories with you is you asking me to explain supply and demand. You had just taken algebra and understood the slop of a line. So I explained the demand curve, then the supply curve, and how things approach an equilibrium. It clicked for you, and you said "That is the neatest thing in the world." And then you took my (non-calculus) econ text book to summer camp.

I still think you think like an economist as well as a philosopher.

Just a clarification on the Richard Epstein discussion. Epstein was one of my law professors. The Federalist Society and Libertarian Law Council (Manny Klausner's organization) co-sponsored a breakfast here in L.A. You were in 9th or 10th grade, and I took you to see him. Epstein argued that Libertarianism was an incomplete theory. Someone must fund the (minimal) government expenditures, but there was nothing in Libertarianism that addressed how government would get money. There was also nothing that addressed things like using the Takings Clause to overcome free rider and collective action problems. So Libertairans add in some ad hoc assumptions about these things, but they do not flow from Libertarian premises. But Epstein's view of Classical Liberalism was flexible enough to account for this.

Background on Epstein and the Taking Clause. Current law is that most regulation for the public benefit that decreases the value of property is not treated as a compensible taking. (If you buy property and want to build a house, but the government finds an endangered lizard habitat on your property, you can be denied the right to build a house. And that is not a compensible taking, unless it completely destroys the value of the property.)

Epstein is a strong proponent of a more expansive definition of takings. In his talk, he argued that Kaldor-Hicks improvements should still be a compensible taking. and this would discourage the government from making some of these regulations. (If the government says you cannot build a shopping center on your commercial property because of traffic, pollution, too many shopping centers around there, etc., it can always be justified as a Kaldor-Hicks improvement. Yes, the cost to you is X but the benefit to everyone else is Y, and Y>X. If the government had to actually pay you X, charge the taxpayers X, but they would receive Y in benefits, they would still be better off if Y>X, but not if X>Y. If the government has to pay, it eliminates the government's incentive to screw over the little guy with inefficient regulations on the easily made claim that it is a Kaldor-Hicks improvement.

Epstein didn't fully explain this, and you asked him a question comparing Kaldor-Hicks and Pareto efficiency and asking why the government should not do something that is Kaldor-Hicks superior. I think you, Epstein, Manny Klausner, and I might have been the only people in the room that understood your question. He took your question quite seriously and gave a very complete answer, referring I think to common law rules about water regulation as an example.

More support for my theory that you think like an economist. : )

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

>I only like writing because I feel like I have things to say. Writing is the least costly vehicle by which I deliver my thoughts. I like arguing just as much! I find writing quite tedious unless it’s on some interesting subject. I have no intrinsic love of the written word.

This gave you a head start over most writers. Many writers start off just wanting to write and it takes them a very long time to figure out what they want to say. And then once they have something they want to say, it takes them longer to say it well.

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