Shifting Involvements : Private Interest and Public Action (Eliot Janeway Lectures on Historical Economics)

Rating:
Summary: interesting but not compelling
Review: The author's premise that the general public is given to mass swings from seeking private gain to seeking public benefit, both driven by disappointment, is interesting; but the argument is never quite proven. For starters, there is offered no empirical evidence that this occurs. (The only historical review given is in support of the narrower point that a growing level of wealth generates disappointment in various affected classes.) Secondly, the explanations for why such swings *might* happen, or be expected to happen, never quite explain why these swings would happen *en masse*.

Nevertheless, I recommend reading this book -- it briefly introduces a range of provoking ideas. These include: that potential for disappointment varies by type of good, that there are multiple responses to disappointment (including postponing response by ignoring problems or internalizing dissatisfaction), that consumers do not have perfect knowledge nor only a single set of preferences, that "comfort is the enemy of pleasure," that public involvement could disappoint for providing too much *or* too little opportunity for participation.

The book is more marketing/psychology than economics, but its arguments could help explain, for instance, our modern shift to disposible goods and possible methods for understanding voters by understanding second-order volitions. It gets you thinking, even if the primary argument of the book is less than convincing.