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puredog's avatar

That is one multi-talented pupper!

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sly-3's avatar

"[James M.] Buchanan’s “The Samaritan’s Dilemma” implies that Jesus has missed the real lesson of his own parable.... He proposes a two-player game in which a “Samaritan” is pitted against a “potential parasite.” The Samaritan’s choices in this game are to help or not help; the parasite’s options are to work or not work....Buchanan is concerned with the psychic discomfort of the Samaritan who “may find himself seriously injured by the necessity of watching the parasite starve himself while refusing to work.” The battered man by the side of the road that Buchanan conjures with his title functions in the game not as the victim of malign forces beyond his control, but rather as a predator, out to exploit the gullible Samaritan’s weakness for assuaging the pain of others. As long as the parasite—the predator—can count on that weakness in his prey, he can “win” the game; that is, he can shirk work and yet strategically manipulate his victim into repeatedly extending aid. The hypothesis, Buchanan asserts, is that “modern man has become incapable of making the choices that are required to prevent his exploitation by predators of his own species.”

-- From "Kochonomics: The Racist Roots of Public Choice Theory", a review of Nancy Maclean's essential book, Democracy in Chains.

Throw in a little Rand-esque Objectivism, and you got a stew Baby!

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