Links ...

1. Paul Krugman: Patients Are Not Consumers. How and why health care economics goes beyond demand and supply. On his blog, he says he's channeling Kenneth Arrow's classic work. See also: this precursor blog post which has this memorable line:

   There’s a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don’t have TV series about heroic middle managers or heroic economists.

2. Dan Ariely in Scientific American: How Self Control Works. "It's a skill, we are learning, that profoundly shapes lives. How does it work? Where does it come from?"

3. Terry Eagleton in CHE: In Praise of Marx. "The truth is that Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the communist world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition."

4. Benedict Carey in NYTimes: The Psychology of Cheating:

   “Cheating is especially easy to justify when you frame situations to cast yourself as a victim of some kind of unfairness,” said Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the use of prescription drugs to improve intellectual performance. “Then it becomes a matter of evening the score; you’re not cheating, you’re restoring fairness.”