This is the 16th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India. Steven Pinker, in his book Enlightenment Now, relates an old Russian joke about two peasants named Boris and Igor. They are both poor. Boris has a goat. Igor does not. One day, Igor is granted a wish by a visiting fairy. What will he wish for? “I wish,” he says, “that Boris’s goat should die.” The joke ends there, revealing as much about human nature as about economics. Consider the three things that ...
