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Dang, your friend of the family could use a little more tact. I loath those kinds of questions.

• cryptoz 7y ago
  Microeconomics classes in America teach undergrads that 'rational' people only care about increases in wealth and do not care about non-wealth-increasing activities. It is such a wrong model about human behavior but it gets repeated like gospel every year at most schools in the country. So it's no wonder that people are out there, suggesting that we're all idiots for not focusing exclusively on wealth accumulation through our 20s as they were taught that is what 'rational' people do. It's a tactless question, sure, but it should also be expected from a society that idolizes wealth the way ours does.
  • astine 7y ago
    "Microeconomics classes in America teach undergrads that 'rational' people only care about increases in wealth and do not care about non-wealth-increasing activities." This is not true, (or if it is being taught, the professor doesn't understand what he is supposed to be teaching.) What first year economics courses do teach--what is meant by the term 'homoeconomicus'--is that in aggregate, people rationally pursue their own self interest. 'Self-interest' is defined here as a subjective utility threshold. So, for example, if someone cares about their children, they will work hard and make a lot of sacrifices to support their children. The idea is that the market follows the aggregate self interest of people and so we don't have to worry about the miss-pricing of goods because the market will take care of that. The difficulty with this idea isn't that people have wrong values--modern economics presupposes that values are inherently subjective and thus cannot be judged--it's that people are capable of making consistently rational decisions in pursuit of their subjective goals despite information disparities and cognitive biases.
  • synlatexc 7y ago
    Reminded of this line from Paranoid Park: "Grownups do stuff for money. There is no other reason."