Two weeks ago Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution called me a Scrooge for pointing out that "helping" professions don’t help more. So this Christmas day, let me Scrooge again by pointing out the dark side of gifts. It is not just that gifts can be
Tirta, imagine you gave one of your children twice as much stuff for Xmas as another - how do you think the one with less would feel about that? Of how would your child feel if one of their friends, with parents just as rich as you, got twice as much stuff? How would you feel?
what's your basis for concluding that people, when gift-giving, are comparing their gift to that of others? or consciously and intentionally playing in some kind of contest -- a war of love -- to look better than, and to deliberately harm, others?
Interesting. I don't know that I entirely agree, mostly because I don't feel that way about gifts, or at least I don't think I think or behave that way about gifts I receive. But then I'm a man, and maybe my feeling about gifts is different. I think we need a little more analysis on the evolutionary forces that would have caused such behavior.
Tirta, imagine you gave one of your children twice as much stuff for Xmas as another - how do you think the one with less would feel about that? Of how would your child feel if one of their friends, with parents just as rich as you, got twice as much stuff? How would you feel?
what's your basis for concluding that people, when gift-giving, are comparing their gift to that of others? or consciously and intentionally playing in some kind of contest -- a war of love -- to look better than, and to deliberately harm, others?
Interesting. I don't know that I entirely agree, mostly because I don't feel that way about gifts, or at least I don't think I think or behave that way about gifts I receive. But then I'm a man, and maybe my feeling about gifts is different. I think we need a little more analysis on the evolutionary forces that would have caused such behavior.
Like most important things in life, this has been explored on The Simpsons, when Apu wrecked the curve for everybody else on Valentine's Day.