Download 7/20/98 KUMF / KGPR T. M. Power Morality and Economic Choice

7/20/98
KUMF / KGPR
T. M. Power
Morality and Economic Choice
Economists have elicited many a snicker and sneer because of their willingness to
try to express in dollar terms many things that commercial markets do not regularly
evaluate. Economists, for instance, have tried to say something about the
economic value of wildlife, fishing streams, the view from the rim of the Grand
Canyon, and, even, in certain circumstances, the value of human life or the cost of
maiming human injuries.
[I, for instance, have worked on studies that have tried to quantify the economic
value of additional wilderness designation or of free-flowing rivers or of wolf
reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I can still remember the late,
great Montana historian, K. Ross Toole, who was a neighbor of mine up the
Bitterroot, sneering at me one day as a bald eagle soared overhead: " …and just
what value would you put on that, you ethical moron!," he jibed.
Well, I obviously was not deterred by these taunts by people who were usually
sympathetic with my work. I still spend most of my professional time puzzling over
how economic analysis can help clarify environmental conflicts and contribute to
the development good public policy.]
The charge is that economists are stumbling unprepared and ignorant into the field
of morality, ethics, aesthetics, etc. when they deal with environmental values? To
most people, after all, environmental values are not economic in character.
Economists are rather hard nosed in their defense of their involvement in many
areas where the general public may think ethics, not economics, should rule. As
long as limited resources prevent us from pursuing all those things that we think
we have an ethical obligation to purse, choices are going to have to be made about
how far to pursue each of those worthy objectives. In that setting, where feelings
of ethical obligation motivate our actions to begin with, the constraints of scarcity
limit what we can accomplish. It is here that economists insist that they can help.
Making choices in the face of scarcity is what economics is all about.
In that setting, there is no avoiding the need to evaluate what will be gained if
more effort in devoted towards one objective rather than another and what will be
lost. Evaluation of the potential gains and losses is unavoidable if we are going to
do the best we can in meeting our ethical obligations with the limited resources at
our disposal. The fact that our motivations are ethical does not make the problem
of constrained choice any less economic in character. Money values may not be at
stake, but the evaluation of many different costs and benefits is. Economic logic
can help improve our performance in this type of decision making.
Consider a topic where non-economists get most upset with economists: the
evaluation of human injury and death. Clearly one cannot and should not put a
dollar value on individual human lives. At the same time, however, most of us
would agree that we as individuals and as a society should not seek to block
absolutely all human death. Almost all of us, as death approaches, would make a
decision against the constant employment of heroic measures to keep us alive as
vegetables. Similarly, all of us engage in activities every day that have a small but
finite risk of serious injury or death: We drive our cars; we fly in airplanes; we float
rivers; we hike in the mountains. The satisfaction, convenience, excitement, or
inspiration justify the risks. Similarly, none of us would support regulations that
required that all buildings and bridges be designed to withstand any conceivable
earthquake or fire. We want to be reasonably safe, but not perfectly safe, because
to be perfectly safe might well cost an infinite amount of money and then we
would not be able to pursue other things that are ethically important to us.
So we all, individually and collectively, regularly make choices that risk injury and
death for ourselves and others. We usually do not agonize over these decisions. We
weigh the costs and benefits and get on with our lives. In the process, we implicitly
put a value on a statistically-likely injury or death, just as economists do. Economic
reasoning is unavoidable even when human life is at stake.
So where does economic analysis end and moral reasoning begin? Certainly when it
comes to the evaluation of the basic objectives we are pursuing in our lives and the
priorities we give them, moral reasoning dominates. For a broad range of decisions,
benefit-cost analysis is morally unacceptable: The sixth commandment, for
instance, does not say "thou shalt not commit adultry unless the pleasure of doing
so outweighs the hassels of getting caught." Likewise, we have incorporated into
public policy some objectives that purposely do not take cost into account: The
endangered species act, for instance, commits us to saving all species regardless of
the cost unless that cost is so high that it would do serious damage to other vital
public objectives. Then we turn the decision over to cabinet-level committee
appropriately knick-named the "God committee," for it is asked to make a deeply
ethical decision.
Clearly there are realms where the economists’ commitment to evaluation of
benefits and costs and tradeoffs is inappropriate. Equally clear, however, is the fact
that in many of our work-a-day pursuits, even those motivated primarily by ethical
concerns, economic analysis may be useful, even if it is bothersome and frustrating
in its hardnosed logic.