Sentence of Enduring Value
2008-04-08 · Original WordPress address
That point is that the principles of social interaction are the primary subject of moral evaluation, not the patterns [those interactions create] themselves.
--- Will the Lesser
My thing is talk of those patterns seem to pull hair triggers on normativity on both sides of the issue. Distribution should be a positive and descriptive aspect of social science just like the measurement of GDP and theory that explains its levels or the courting rituals of Amazonian tribespeople and the theories that explain them ((I dunno... I'm trying to throw the other social sciences a bone)).
Why isn't the gini index, as an indicator of dynamics in the economy, as widely reported as GDP? If there were two economies with the same GDP, the one with changes in the gini would be more interesting.
Yes, I just made a normative claim about positivity.