>"I do a little number in my Micro classes called "Pareto Optimality at >Auschwitz" ... " > >Way back, I changed degrees half a semester into an education/economics >degree. Those who purported to teach how to teach couldn't teach, and >those who purported to explain human behaviour weren't talking about >anybody I knew - well, not then, anyway. > >Maybe I wasn't as lucky with my teachers as your students so obviously are. > >Maybe too many of us weren't. > >All the best, >Rob. I think famines work better--they make the point that if your labor-time endowment has no value, then your utility has no weight in the social welfare function that the market maximizes, and so you starve to death: the market's equilibrium weighs each person's preferences roughly by the market value of his/her endowment. I think famines work better because starvation is not a willed and desired objective of anyone in the market--while mass death certainly was a willed and desired objective of those who ran the show during the "final solution." "Final solution" examples leave people thinking, "yes, this market-as-a-social-allocation-mechanism does indeed efficiently produce the goals that society has chosen." Famine examples--I think, at least--probe a little bit deeper because the market also plays a powerful role in "choosing" "society's" "goals." Brad DeLong
