The Rotten Kid Theorem

Consider a situation with one altruist ("parent") and two beneficiaries ("kids"). One of them is a rotten kid who would enjoy kicking his little sister. The analysis I have just described implies that if the dollar value to the rotten kid of kicking his sister (the number of dollars worth of consumption he would, if necessary, give up in order to do so) is less than the dollar cost to the sister of being kicked, the rotten kid is better off not kicking her. After the parent has adjusted his expenditure on the kids in response to the increased utility of the kid and the decreased utility of the kicked sister, the rotten kid will have lost more than he has gained. Here again, the argument does not depend on the parent observing the kick but only on his observing how happy the two kids are.
This result--that a rotten kid, properly allowing for the effects of parental altruism, will find it in his self-interest to kick his sister only if it is efficient to do so--is known as the Rotten Kid Theorem. There is a sense in which the altruist in such a situation functions, unintentionally, as a stand-in for the bureaucrat-god, at least as far as the tiny society made up of altruist and beneficiaries is concerned. Because of the altruist's peculiar utility function--which contains the beneficiaries' utilities among its arguments--both altruist and beneficiaries find it in their private interest to maximize Marshall efficiency, to make decisions according to whether the net effect on altruist and beneficiaries is or is not a Marshall improvement.

--David Friedman

similarity

. . . She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn't control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name.

--Milan Kundera, Immortality

pour vous

He saw her once, and in the glance,
A moment's glance of meeting eyes,
His heart stood still in sudden trance,
He trembled with a sweet surprise-
As one that caught through opening skies
A distant gleam of Paradise.

That summer eve his heart was light,
With lighter step he trod the ground,
And life was fairer in his sight,
And music was in every sound.
He blessed the world where there could be
So beautiful a thing as she.

But days went by - he found her not;
And years rolled on - she never came;
Though ever round the fatal spot
A mocking whisper of her name
In hollow whispers seemed to roll
Through the dark chambers of his soul.

From land to land he sought her face;
To him were neither night nor day;
The phantom he was doomed to chase
Still glided from his touch away;
And life that once had been so bright
Seemed but a dream of yesternight.

So after many years he came
A wanderer from a distant shore:
The street, the house, were still the same,
But those he sought were there no more;
His burning words, his hopes and fears,
Unheeded, fell on alien ears.

Only the children from their play
Would pause the mournful tale to hear,
Shrinking in half-alarm away,
Or step by step would venture near,
To touch with timid curious hands
That strange wild man from other lands.

He sat beside the busy street
There, where he last had seen her face;
And thronging memories, bitter-sweet
Seemed yet to haunt the ancient place :
Her footfall ever floated near:
Her voice was ever in his ear.

He sometimes as the daylight waned
And evening mists began to roll
In half soliloquy complained
Of that black shadow in his soul
And blindly fanned with cruel care
The ashes of a vain despair.

The summer fled; the lonely man
Still lingered out the lessening days;
Still as the night drew on, would scan
Each passing face with closer gaze,
Till sick at heart he turned away,
And sighed, "She will not come today".

So by degrees his spirit bent
To mock its own despairing cry,
In stern self-torture to invent
New luxuries of agony,
And people all the vacant space
With visions of her perfect face

That perfect face whose smile to own
Men dare to live and fools to die,
Dearer than wealth or power or throne,
Sweeter than sweetest harmony:
That oftenest cheers their lonely lot
Who live their life and heed it not.

Sometimes he felt that she was nigh;
He heard no step, but she was there;
As if an angel suddenly
Were bodied from the viewless air,
And all her fine ethereal frame
Should fade as swiftly as it came.

So half in Fancy's sunny trance,
And half in Misery's aching void,
With set and stony countenance
His bitter being he enjoyed,
And thrust for ever from his mind
The happiness he could not find.

As when the wretch in lonely room
To selfish death is madly hurled,
The glamour of that fatal fume
Shuts out the wholesome living world -
So all his manhood, strength and pride
One sickly dream had set aside.

And so it chanced once more that she
Came by the old familiar spot;
The face he would have died to see
Bent o'er him, and he knew it not;
Too rapt in selfish grief to hear,
Even when happiness was near.

And pity filled her gentle breast
For him that would not stir nor speak;
The dying crimson of the West
That faintly tinged his haggard cheek,
Fell on her as she stood, and shed
A glory round the patient head.

Ah, let him wake! The moments fly;
This awful tryst may be the last;
And see, the tear that dimmed her eye
Had fallen on him e'er she passed -
She passed: the crimson paled to grey
And hope departed with the day.

The heavy hours of night went by,
And silence quickened into sound,
And light slid up the eastern sky,
And life began its daily round.
But light and life for him were fled:
His name was numbered with the dead.

CLD, Christ Church

et tu?

I will go at least as far as you have gone,
retrace your every step,
walking through the darkness with your guidance,
adoring your fragrance forever more
-- me



all I know,
I hate to be here
I hate to be at the bottom of this meaningless strata
I hate to not knowing you earlier
I hate to be a nobody



The future has no meaning,
only today means everything to me
I can't win, doesn't mean I can't give a fight

Pieces

I tried to be perfect, but nothing was worth it
I don't believe it makes me real
I thought it'd be easy, but no one believes me
I meant all the things that I said.

...

This place is so empty
My thoughts are so tempting
I don't know how it got so bad
Sometimes it's so crazy
That nothing can save me,
But it's the only thing that I have.

...

I tried to be perfect it just wasn't worth it
Nothing could ever be so wrong
It's hard to believe me
It never gets easy
I guess I knew that all along.

If you believe it's in my soul
I'd say all the words that I know
Just to see if it would show
That I'm trying to let you know
That I'm better off on my own.

--sum 41, Pieces