I heard an interesting comment on the radio the other day (Wednesday, April 29, 2015). I looked it up to see who it might have been making the point, and it looks like it was Joseph Stiglitz on The Commonwealth Club.
He talked about the fact that what people say they want when they think things through is different from how they act in the moment. That in itself is not interesting. That's well known. What was interesting to me was that he went on to say, "Who's to say which is what the truly want?" Often people take a scornful attitude to this phenomenon. The answer people give when asked what they would do is seen as untruthful because it does not match the actions. The actions are seen as foolish because they do not match what they person would do if they thought things through. I liked this alternate view, that these are just two different things -- w hat people say they want, and what people do. It's just an observation of human nature, not a judgment.
He went on to say that's why we have thing like child labor laws. Because we agree that we don't want child labor, but when we act in the moment, we buy what's cheapest. We have child labor laws not because paternalistic government thinks it knows better than consumers, but because we humans have agreed that we want this to be based on what we want when we think things through, not what we want when we act in the moment.
