Can rational choice theory justify hope and patience in dealing with calamities such as financial collapse or terminal illness? The Book of Job is a good entry-point. Three friends of Job counsel him to avoid hopelessness and bitterness arising from frustration regarding calamities. They do so on non-rational grounds. They argue that Job should ignore the evidence and instead blindly uphold the belief ‘God is just.’ However, such blindness permits magic, superstitions, and cultish beliefs. The specter of such beliefs is (...) probably what prompted the fourth friend, Elihu, to dismiss the arguments of the three friends. Elihu reasons that one should be rational, i.e., acknowledge the evidence. This need not entail the conclusion ‘God is unjust’ – as God cannot perform miracles on a daily basis. That is, given the evidence, one cannot sustain hopeful beliefs that God will interfere and reverse the course of natural catastrophes and shocks from which humans, as well as other living beings, suffer. One at best can be patient, accept suffering considering worse counterfactuals. Based on Elihu’s critique of the arguments of the three friends, and building on Maimonides’s interpretation, this paper concludes that standard rational choice theory can explain patience, but not hope. (shrink)

The distinction that Ainslie draws among the triple-phenomena “suppression,” “resolve,” and “habit” is a great advance in decision making theory. But the conceptual machinery “willpower,” and its underpinning distinction between small/soon rewards as opposed to large/later rewards, provides a faulty framework to understand the triple-phenomena.

Based on the Chinese General Social Survey database, this article explores the relationship between income inequality and residents’ subjective well-being from the perspective of inequality of opportunity and inequality of effort. We find that inequality of opportunity has a negative impact on subjective well-being in China, where inequality of effort has a positive impact. Our empirical results are robust for changing the inequality indicators. In the sub-sample studies, consistent conclusions are obtained in rural areas, whereas in urban areas only inequality (...) of effort has a significant impact. The results of mechanism study show that inequality of opportunity decreases residents’ sense of fairness, and inequality of effort increases residents’ sense of fairness, thus affecting their subjective well-being. The results of this study provide a good response to the inconclusive research findings on the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being. (shrink)