The Constraints on Helping

The Freeman, February 1986.

Excerpt:

Let me pose a problem in the form that Einstein used to call a “thought experiment.” Whereas Einstein used the device to imagine such things as the view from the head of a column of light, we will use it for the more pedestrian purpose of imagining the view from the office of a middle-echelon bureaucrat. Our task: to think through how to structure a specific government social-action program so that it might reasonably be expected to accomplish net good.

Online:
UNZ [pdf]
The Freeman