Tag Archives: efficiency

Jonathan Baron & Ewa Szymanska

Altruistic behavior often leads to desirable social outcomes. We can thus assume that more altruism is better than less, other things being equal. But altruism tends to be already widely encouraged, so efforts to promote it even further may produce little noticeable change. Instead, it might be easier to do more good by improving efficiency of the altruistic behaviors already in place.

Jonathan Baron & Ewa Szymanska, Heuristics and Biases in Charity, in Daniel Oppenheimer & Christopher Olivola (eds.), The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity, New York, 2011, p. 215

James MacKaye

Quantities of pain or pleasure may be regarded as magnitudes having the same definiteness as tons of pig iron, barrels of sugar, bushels of wheat, yards of cotton, or pounds of wool; and as political economy seeks to ascertain the conditions under which these commodities may be produced with the greatest efficiency–so the economy of happiness seeks to ascertain the conditions under which happiness, regarded as a commodity, may be produced with the greatest efficiency.

James MacKaye, The Economy of Happiness, Boston, 1906, p. 183-184

Lucas Grosman

[Una] forma tentadora de confrontar las restricciones propias de la escasez es apelar al hecho de que el Gobierno es ineficiente, corrupto, o ambas cosas. […] La idea sería que, en vez de aceptar que los recursos son escasos, deberíamos concentrarnos en erradicar estos males públicos. Ahora bien, este planteo presupone que no podemos afirmar que los recursos son escasos porque en un escenario contrafáctico en el que los funcionarios fueran más honestos y diligentes, los recursos públicos alcanzarían tanto para proveer el medicamento a Beviacqua como para brindar cobertura médica básica a los carenciados. El problema es que especular acerca de lo que pasaría en un universo paralelo de poco nos sirve a la hora de decidir cómo asignar los recursos existentes en este. Es innegable que la corrupción y la ineficiencia son problemas mayúsculos que merecen ser enfrentados con tesón, pues ellos son las causas de muchas carencias sociales, pero quejarnos acerca de su incidencia no nos librara de las restricciones concretas que la escasez impone.

Lucas Grosman, Escasez e igualdad: Los derechos sociales en la Constitución, Buenos Aires, 2008, p. 62

E. F. Schumacher

We produce in order to be able to afford certain amenities and comforts as “consumers”. If, however, somebody demanded these same amenities and comforts while he was engaged in “production”, he would be told that this would be uneconomic, that it would be inefficient, and that society could not afford such inefficiency.

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, London, 1974, p. 87