{"id":5365,"date":"2008-01-17T10:23:37","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T10:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5365"},"modified":"2008-01-17T10:23:37","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T10:23:37","slug":"the-dismal-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5365","title":{"rendered":"the dismal science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steven E. Lansburg in yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/16\/opinion\/16landsburg.html?_r=1&#038;ref=opinion&#038;oref=slogin\">New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even if you\u2019ve just lost your job, there\u2019s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that\u2019s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This gives me great ideas for other moral arguments! For example,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is churlish for people to complain and whine when they&#8217;re drowning. They were happy enough to drink water earlier in their lives. Their bodies are mostly <em>made<\/em> of water, for crying out loud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Can you believe how people don&#8217;t want to get shot? Don&#8217;t they realize that our forefathers used bullets to shoot the Redcoats and win our freedom? Where would we be today without gun-related deaths?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Americans nowadays seem to want medicine whenever they get sick! Can you believe it? Don&#8217;t they realize that without plagues and pestilence, Europeans would never have conquered the New World?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven E. Lansburg in yesterday&#8217;s New York Times: Even if you\u2019ve just lost your job, there\u2019s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that\u2019s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}