Michael Munger on Desires, Morality, and Self-Interest

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2021

⏱️ 74 minutes

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Summary

Economist and author Michael Munger of Duke University talks about human wants and desires with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Human beings have desires about our desires. Can we change what we want? And how should economists and normal human beings think about doing the right thing, what we often call morality? Is acting morally self-interested behavior or is it possible to act selflessly?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.6	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.2	We'd love to hear from you.
0:38.2	Today is February 2, 2021.
0:40.2	My guest is economist, political theorist and author Michael Munger of Duke University.
0:44.9	I want to thank Plantronics for supplying the Blackwater 5220 for today's guest.
0:50.3	Michael's last year on the program in July of 2020 talking about education.
0:53.9	Five counted correctly.
0:56.0	This is Mike's 38th appearance on econ talk, which is clearly a record.
1:00.6	It will probably never be broken.
1:02.4	Mike, welcome back to econ talk.
1:04.2	It is a pleasure to be the Sai Young of econ talk.
1:07.6	I think it's one of the Cal Ripon, but I think that's your line.
1:11.5	Our topic for today is a small narrow one.
1:14.8	It's economics or maybe economists in economics and how we, as economists, think about and
1:21.9	teach our students about what makes us do what we do, how we choose, how we make decisions.
	...

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