How people make choice? Why and what does it mean when a person choose the item A instead of item B? Choice would vary among different persons. Is item A better than item B, or item B is better than item A? May item A and B both equally be
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the same? Are there any internal elements, subsets, variables, or components inside item A or item B which determines the choice to make between these two? If there are some elements, subsets, variables, or components which play the key factors to make the choice, what would the elements, subsets, variables, or components be?
The economic reason seems the common-ground of compromising on abortion which remained in place even as the extent of the practice of induced abortion become more widely known. As the role of induced abortion plays in fertility transitions has become better understood, and more women have gained enhanced access to legal abortion that permits its use as a means of fertility control (Hudgson, 2007). The economic reason on the abortion may dominate the European elites from Middle Age to post Modern time. The land elites’ stander of living was functioned with the predictable income from fixed assets, lands, or dowries. Families were forced to recognize the sub-division and transmission of landed estate, family business, or investment portfolios based on their privileged lifestyle. The small size of family was a statue-protecting behavior. Abortion become the main method to terminate the
‘unwanted pregnancy’ and some recorded history reported that women have resorted to induced abortion regardless of legal sanction and risk of health and well-being (David, 1981; Devereaux, 1955, 1967, 1976).
There exists three demographic assumptions of family planning programs were: (1) Rapid population growth impedes economic development, and lower rates of population growth and lower fertility will lead to improved living standards and human welfare. (2) Couples in developing countries want fewer children and interested in regulating their fertility. (3) Making contraception widely available is an effective way to meet couple’s need for fertility regulation and help lower fertility levels. And the research evidence of the debate over the link between rapid population growth and economic development are unfounded (Population matters).
Even though there is no other indicator of reproductive behavior predicts a population’s fertility better than contraceptive prevalence. The plots of trends in fertility and prevalence in Thailand (1969-83) and Taiwan (1965-85) falling to the tremendous regression line was taken as a close standard look of the Eastern Asian elites to investigate why the fertility rates remain high in other developing countries (Bongaarts, 1987).
Rational choice theory assumes that people would make the rational choice. But what dose ‘rationality’ mean? Rationality may contain the similarity with exercise of human ‘reason’ in the context of Kantian, which related to the moral order and obligation. But in concept of Utilitarian, the ‘price’ is the main element of rationality.
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The problem will rise when the element or the choice cannot be equivalent to ‘price’?
Some choices are more complicated than choosing between the ‘one apple’ and ‘two oranges’. For example, ‘life’ cannot be equivalent or estimated by price, and life cannot be traded. And love, family, friendship, and many virtues, courage, wisdom, charity and etc. are all priceless.
Rational choice is a particular model of individual behavior which could be traced around 1870, the revolution of economic theory. The economists deal with the economic problem by determining the relationship between a set of unlimited ends.
The scarcity of resources and rationality are a set of tools for defining the best choice.
Rational choice assumes that individual decisions are based on desires and be measured as a maximizing process with mathematical techniques. (Barnes and Sheppaed,1992). Human reason may tend to converge on the truth in moral and politics as well as in science, since it associated with the Enlightenment, the origin of discovering the modern natural science and social science. Scholars point out that Enlightenment was not a single movement, the Scottish, French, and German having their significant paces. The spirit of ‘disagreement’ more than the ‘agreement’ of Enlightenment is rarely acknowledged, and the Enlightenment thinkers had even cast doubt on if there exited the best way to exercise human reason. The progress and diversity were asserted and they existed in the process.
Life can be more subtle though the language of the rational choice may be explained the demand vector d (p, M) which is chosen by an individual when faced with the price vector p, and the income M. Some scholars, for instance Uzawa (Arrow, 1959) suggested a binary relation but with a weak ordering. Furthermore, rational choice may reveal the ‘preference’ with element-valued choice functions and some restrictions may are suggested (Sen, 1971). Sen articulated the detail reasoning of
‘revealed preference’ which Arrow had been identified. When someone makes a choice between x and y, not only x or y is alternative, but implied one is rejected where the preference is hidden.
The conflict between ‘morality’ and ‘rationality’ need to be examined by the utility maximization and the rational agents are also examined in the light of micro-economic concept. The question is asked ‘can circumstance be specified in which imposing constraints on one’s self-interest?’ or ‘utility-maximizing behavior would be irrational?’ when the conflict between the morality and rationality arise. In pure reasoning, the logic is reasonable like this: ‘Under condition of perfect competition, the individually rational, self-interested, behavior of all agents, induces a Pareto-efficient outcome.’ It means there is no one superior to the other. In optimal
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equilibrium, each actor dose as well as he or she can, that is his utility is maximized subject to the utility maximization to others. If by acting purely self-interestedly, each agent dose as well as he or she can, then it would be irrational for any agent to impose restrictions on the pursuits of his or her self-interest.’ But the logic of the Utilitarian is in a given the utility of others, and a perfect competition, people would do the best by pursuing his self-interested behavior and do less well by constraining his self-interested behavior. Then the actor will have no incentive to adopt constrains, including moral or other on his utility-maximizing behavior. (Kraus & Coleman, 1987)
In the real world, there is no perfect competition, some gain, some loose. Market failure many occurs throughout human history. For example, while capitalists attempt to maximize profits for their survival, workers face the opposite problem of trying to resist capitalists’ demands. There is rarely ‘morally free zone’ or ‘moral anarchy’ in the public domain. The similar dilemma exists in politics and the public policies while the government or public agents tend to apply their utility maximizing actions, by increasing their incentive, or claimed to create the public welfare, left no room of morality, who will really benefit, and who will be harmed? How to examine the bias of government actions? To some extent, morality is a potential solution to the problem of market failure, since it is introduced to govern social interaction. ‘The rationality of morality depends on its being a particular kind of solution…one that secures a Pareto-efficient outcome by making each individual better-off. To have a viable solution to the problem of market failure, morality must be both individually and collectively rational.’ (Kraus & Coleman, 1987)
Some scholars indicated that Hobbesian political contractarianism is a model of characterizing the state of nature as a failed market. For Weber (1930), capitalist is born from believing in the protestant ethic, though many modern scholars regard it as a historical fact died in the early century. Marxism and neo-Marxism criticized the capitalism expanded their kingdom by exploiting the labor echoed in the air of the nineteenth century. Morality and politics attempt to ‘bridge the gap’ between the in-efficient equilibrium of the state of nature and the potential Pareto-efficient equilibrium of unavailable if individuals act non-cooperatively.