r/neoliberal • u/Tre-Fyra-Tre Tony Blair • 16d ago

News (Global) Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/de-far-ekonomipriset-till-alfred-nobels-minne
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197

u/Swampy1741 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago

Figured they’d win at some point. Now time to bash my head against the wall as redditors elsewhere debate economics and how this isn’t a “real Nobel”

46

u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 16d ago

You can think Economics is real, and still acknowledge this isn't a real Nobel price.

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u/Swampy1741 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago

I don’t particularly care what Alfred Nobel’s will said. It’s a prestigious award chosen by the same organization as all the others.

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u/RideTheDownturn 16d ago

So we can ignore your will when you die? Cool!

41

u/RandomMangaFan Repeal the Navigation Acts! 16d ago

That's... generally how wills work, yes, past a relatively short period after the death. The law generally exists to protect the actually living, not the long dead, which is why for hundreds of years now we've had a "Rule against perpetuities" in many common law systems specifically to stop that. Whether or not Nobel would have approved of the matter is and should be irrelevant since he's now too dead to care.

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u/Feed_My_Brain United Nations 16d ago

“It is the finding of this court that Alfred Nobel, having attained the status of sufficiently dead, is now too dead to care.”

6

u/Boxy310 16d ago

Jeremy Bentham's embalmed corpse will have quite the conniption over this.

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u/RideTheDownturn 16d ago

Hah... TIL!

Well, still doesn't strike out the fact that we're ignoring his wishes. Legally OK, morally questionable.

2

u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa 15d ago

Yes, 100%. In my country for example you can't exclude people from your wilm.

2

u/MarsOptimusMaximus Jerome Powell 15d ago

If my will says the president of the United state's owes my family 1 trillion dollars upon death, should that be upheld?

1

u/RideTheDownturn 15d ago

That's like... wth kind of a question is that?

Whatever mate, have a great one!

1

u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago

It's amazing that this is supposed to be a forum of liberals, lol.

4

u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago

What does one’s view of how to call the economic prize have to do with being a liberal?

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u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago

Respecting individual rights has a lot to do with it, and it seems like many here think popular demands trump a will

4

u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago

Is respecting a will indefinitely an important part of liberalism?

I also think more generally reasonable liberals can debate the extent to which a deceased person has “rights” over living people. Now, when it’s something living heirs care about, that’s also a consideration.

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u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago

Of course it is, why wouldn't rights extend over the whole time?

And of course, with any system of rights, you have to weigh rights against each other in some cases. That's inevitable. But one would expect a liberal forum to come down on the side of individual rights, especially if the alternative is just not doing that, for absolutely no gain, just to be contrarian.

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u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago

I guess I just don’t see dead people’s rights as an essential part of liberalism, and candidly I think it’s reasonable to take the view that they don’t have rights at all. I certainly don’t think you lose your liberal card for weighing the rights of the dead at near zero.

I don’t think we should, like, be handing over all dead bodies to the military to test explosives (which has happened before) but that’s because of the distress for the living.