Aiming At Giving Our Kids

Economics Has Increasingly Become The Science Of Human Behavior In General, And It's All The More Unlikely To Think That It Can Possibly Be Value-free - And, In Fact, It Isn't. Economics Rests On Un-argued Assumptions That Need To Be Examined.

I Find This In All These Places I've Been Travelling - From India To China, To Japan And Europe And To Brazil - There Is A Frustration With The Terms Of Public Discourse, With A Kind Of Absence Of Discussion Of Questions Of Justice And Ethics And Of Values.

Other Animals Can Make Sounds, And Sounds Can Indicate Pleasure And Pain. But Language, A Distinctly Human Capacity, Isn´t Just For Registering Pleasure And Pain. It´s About Declaring What Is Just And What Is Unjust, And Distinguishing Right From Wrong. We Don´t Grasp These Things Silently, And Then Put Words To Them; Language Is The Medium Through Which We Discern And Deliberate About The Good.

Markets Are Useful Instruments For Organizing Productive Activity. But Unless We Want To Let The Market Rewrite The Norms That Govern Social Institutions, We Need A Public Debate About The Moral Limits Of Markets.

The Relief Of Suffering Is A Great Good. The Curing Of Illness And Disease - These Are Great Human Goods. This Is The Mission Of Medicine.