Is There a Right to Judge, Is It All About You?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There's something very sad, constricted, narrow, superficial about the life vasili ah is leading. He has this weird, distorted conception of human life in which it's all about him and how much he has. And that takes a great tollon the other people in his life. We have no right to judge vasili ah and to do so is to be paternalistic, to impose our preference function on his.

Physician and careful reader Richard Gunderman of Indiana University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how Adam Smith and Leo Tolstoy looked at greed. Drawing on Tolstoy's short story, "Master and Man," and adding some Thomas Hobbes along the way, Gunderman argues that a life well-lived requires us to rise above our lower desires. Join Gunderman and Roberts for a sleigh ride into a snowy blizzard, where you won't find your way by following rules, but rather by recognizing what needs to be seen.