I happened to speak to Russell on the phone after his email, and we discussed how this point applies broadly: if it were socially permissible to lurk outside someone's home and peek in the windows, people would spend more on thicker window coverings or move prancing-around-the-house-in-their-underwear activities into inner rooms, at some cost to themselves. To go back to the post that started this discussion, what I fail to understand is why it is unreasonable to require that police secure a search warrant before going on "trash dives" in alleys or backyards. Previous Politech messages: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/05/jonaathan-weinberg-on/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/05/montana-supreme-court/ -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Jonaathan Weinberg on 1984 and right to privacy in your trash Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 13:43:04 -0400 From: Russell Roberts <rrobert2@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <42F3CA7C.4060804@private> True, we let strangers handle our trash and come take it away. But there is a strong Hayekian norm that it is impolite to go through your neighbor's trash. If that norm is destroyed, if our neighbors or the government are liklely to paw through our trash, we will all behave very differently with our credit card receipts and whatever intimate items we now throw away. We will guard them, shred them, keep them. And the cost will be high. Russell Roberts Professor of Economics J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center Department of Economics 4400 University Dr. MSN 3G4 George Mason University Fairfax, VA. 22030 _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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