Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website

is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,

find links and other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is

mailadicontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.

My guest today is my colleague here at George Mason University, Robin Hanson. Robin

blogs at overcomingbyus.com. He has a very wide range of interest and today we're going

to look at Robin's unusual perspective on health and medicine. We'll also touch on Robin's

pioneering work on prediction markets. He'll be checking in over the next week at the

comments section for this podcast. So feel free to ask him questions there and challenge

what he says in today's podcast. Robin, what do people think that health care is different

from other things that we care about? And one standard argument is because you need health

care and you'll pay anything to get it to make sure your health is okay, that we have to

use government to intervene in health care markets because in that kind of situation markets

just can't do the job because people are going to act irrationally and spend everything

that they possibly could to keep their health preserved. Is that argument carry any water

for you? As you expect, Russ, no. No? So set that straw man on fire, go ahead.

Obviously there's lots of things we do in life that have different scales. We buy houses,

we take jobs, we do big things, we switch careers, we choose to try to be a rock musician.

And obviously bigger choices have bigger consequences and we should think more about them.

But by itself, that doesn't mean they should be more regulated or more subsidized or any

of the other sorts of things we feel inclined to do about medical care. The biggest argument

...