Normative Economics

Check out this piece in Slate on economics and health care decisions. I will comment more fully later, but a few quick notes.

• Landsburg, I seem to recall, is basically a nut. He's surely not good at rhetoric.


• His framing of the issue doesn't seem helpful.


• I hate contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism, except when I do it.


• Still, it's worth thinking about. How do we make these tradeoffs?

[UPDATE: fixed a spelling error]
[UPDATE: Becker and Posner discuss the same thing this week, in the context of a market for organs.]