In his book “A Conflict of Visions,” the economist Thomas Sowell argues that much of the philosophical debate of the last 200 years has been shaped by the struggle between two competing views of the world.
The “Unconstrained View” is based on the premise that man is basically good and has a natural desire to behave in ways that maximize the benefit to society as a whole. If a man is not behaving in this manner, the reasoning continues, it must be because he has been corrupted by selfish thoughts or ignorantly clings to wrongheaded ideas. The solution, therefore, is for enlightened individuals to educate the masses as to the operating rules that they should follow to achieve the greater social good. Once the masses have “seen the light,” the logic goes, they all will be better off and realize the error of their past ways.
The contrasting “Constrained View” starts from a fundamentally different view of human nature. Its adherents believe that man is inherently self-interested and makes trade-offs within a set of perceived constraints to maximize his personal happiness (or “utility,” to an economist). Under this philosophy, if mankind in total is not acting in a manner consistent with the greater good, it is most likely a problem with incentives or constraints. For example, if natives of the rain forest in Madagascar are cutting down trees and selling them to make charcoal, it is not because they are ignorant of the benefit of a pristine environment. Rather, they are trying to fulfill their personal objectives of feeding their families, and no amount of “re-education” will change this behavior.
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