We’ve been doing a lot of media interviews for SuperFreakonomics, and once in a while you get asked a really interesting question.
But I don’t think this one will ever be topped. It comes from a journalist in India:
You state that your book is based on one fundamental assumption about human nature: people respond to incentives. Which is another way of saying that people are basically selfish. Take someone like Jesus Christ. What was his “incentive” to go on the cross?
This question made me think in about 10 directions at once. It also made me want to grab a New Testament and read it in an entirely new way. For starters, here’s an interesting blog post titled “The Economics of Jesus” which begins with this excellent line: “Jesus probably didn’t know much about macroeconomics, even though he was God.”
By the way, I haven’t yet answered this journalist’s question — it’s an e-mail Q&A interview — so I’m eager for your input.
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Imagine if Jesus didn’t die on the cross – God then would have voided the whole “God so loved the world he gave his only son…” line which would have totally docked his altruism-cred. And what is more valuable to an Almighty God then appearing to be self-less? So self-less that He willingly gave up His one Son so that the non-divine sinner-earthlings could enjoy His Kingdom party palace? Forget for a moment that God could just create Jesus II, but to his voters (believers, minions, etc) it gives the illusion of “look this God guy isn’t here just to set me on fire! I shall do his do-good bidding with a smile.” Shrewd and Machiavellian.
This is going to sound cynical to a lot of people, but here’s one potential answer to your question: It was good for book sales.
“Jesus probably didn’t know much about macroeconomics, even though he was God.”
So there is something that even the omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god couldn’t know?
Yeah, that’s not a contradiction at all.
There is nothing like a purely altruistic act as “jimi” suggests. If we are helping others, there is some emotional gain for us. We feel good about ourselves or something of that sort. Or in other situations, we find it hard to say “no”. So, instead of doing something that is hard for us (saying “no”), we take the easy way out and say “yes”.
So, sure Jesus, whether God or Human, had some incentive.
Christ derived utility from serving others. Since that was what he spent the bulk of his life doing, he was able to maximize his utility.
The principle He taught was that by imitating this lifestyle and following His example – everyone would find that same level of utility maximization.
Are you kidding me? His incentive was a bunch of Romans and some nails. Not much choice on his part.
there are a few ways this could work, but only if jesus believes he will suffer in corporeal form to be rewarded in immaterial form.
so his expected benefit greatly outweighs the costs of crucifixion.
however, the way it doesn’t work in his favor is assuming this is the only way to exist. remember, regardless of whether jesus had rational expectations, his expectations were a life after death.
Jesus was a nice guy, in much the same way that Gandhi was a nice guy. Economics is a study of large masses of people. People like Jesus and Gandhi only come along once in a few hundred years. I think its quite clear that even if Jesus’s acts were purely altruistic, and they very well might not be, that says very little about how an average person on the street behaves.