Megan McArdle of The Atlantic writes:

"I thought that the left had cast the rigid view of the rational value maximizer aside..."

As I just commented:

No, actually. It's the University of Chicago that's cast the rigid view of the rational value maximizer aside.

Or at least, so I presume, since according to the April 18, 2008 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, professors at the U of Chicago are only the fifth highest paid in the US. If they were rational value maximizers, one would think they'd teach at the places that pay more.

And how ironic is that?

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For those who don't know -- U of Chicago is where Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek taught. It's generally regarded as the economics department that's most committed to the view of homo economicus, absolutely dogmatic laissez-faire, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope and, as McArdle puts it, "rational value maximizers." So the fact that when it comes to their own bread and butter professors at U of Chicago can't manage to be the highest paid, and are therefore quite possibly foregoing higher pay at other institutions, is a great irony indeed.

You know, I think it works:

"There are two works that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable hero, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."