I spoke on a panel at AEI with Nobelist Al Roth about his new book, Moral Economics, which covers “repugnant markets,” from prostitution to surrogacy to kidney exchange. A fun book!
My case study was acting. Acting was considered repugnant for over 2,000 years. In Rome, actors could not vote, hold office, or be trusted to give an oath in legal proceedings. So why don’t we find acting repugnant today?
One lesson: weighing costs and benefits is not enough. Roth discusses empirical research showing that legalizing prostitution cut STDs and sexual assaults—against prostitutes and others. But evidence alone won’t shift a repugnance norm. You also have to reframe the activity. Acting, for example was reframed from body rental to a skill requiring intelligence, training and ability. So I went out of my way to say that I am a fan of Aella—though not her only fan—and that I see no reason why escorting should not be considered a skill, requiring intelligence, training, and ability. I can think of few better ways of raising social welfare than making sex 10% better!
I also spoke on human challenge trials. Roth and I agree: challenge trials could have sped up COVID vaccines and saved tens of thousands of lives. We should be angry this didn’t happen. Why didn’t it? Even though most people think human challenge trials are a good idea, there was a repugnance bottleneck because the minority who did find human challenge trials repugnant were in charge. I discuss how to change this.
Al leads the discussion. My comments start at 25:15.
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Is he coming at it from the perspective of dismissing repugnance as an unneeded constraint that we need to rid ourselves of, or from the angle that human morality should be respected even if you don't necessarily agree with all its aspects?
Because imo the more economists dismiss moral concerns as something illegitimate to be dismissed, or more charitably, "navigated around", or "reframed" as the article suggests, the more annoyed I get with them.
The general vibe amongst our peers is definitely that repugnance is dumb and anachronistic.
I’m probably somewhere between you and the median on that. I do think we should be more open to reexamining cultural taboos but also less arrogantly dismissive of them.
To me it's cool to question them and question inconsistencies. I just think the tone matters, and also the whole "oh we just have to trick them around it" attitude is pretty smarmy.