Sublime

In both cases, we don’t look at the true, absolute value presented to us: $20 for a five-minute drive. Instead, we consider $20 compared to $60 and to $1,060 respectively. We compare the relative advantage of $40 shoes to $60 shoes, and decide the money is worth the time. Then we compare the relative advantage of a $1,040 patio set to a $1,060 one

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line somewhere.” The question is: where is the line?

Socrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement.

Econs respond primarily to incentives.

We play with malleable mental accounting when we allow ourselves to classify expenses ambiguously and when we creatively assign expenses to different mental accounts.

“We are going to take things from each other if we have a chance . . . many people need controls around them for them to do the right thing.”

It goes to show just how hard it is to overcome conflicts of interests once they fundamentally color our view of the world.