Monday, April 25, 2011

I know selfishness when I see it, but who am I to judge? The balance of give and take has to be a win-win, or someone's going to be accused of being the selfish one.

"Selfishness is the ultimate strawman, since it is by definition impossible to act in any way that is not selfish. If you value an end goal, whatever that goal happens to be, it is selfish because YOU value it. To value altruism is no more or less selfish than to value wealth. Selfishness is not and cannot be the problem (or complaint), rather it is a disagreement on what SHOULD BE valued. The charge that selfishness is evil is more correctly phrased; what you value is evil while what I value is good. The charge of selfishness always comes from someone who believes they know how to run YOUR life." - gleaned from Frank33328 comment on the Cafe Hayek blog.

I just found it thought provoking lunch hour reading, particularly the Don Boudreaux posts. I had a great macroeconomics teacher in college, but Mr. Boudreaux has a way of boiling things down to the essential and explaining complex economic interactions for mass understanding.