it's almost nobody's preference, revealed or otherwise, to prefer their own unemployment to inflation. 1/

when you say "people" here, you are describing an artifact of a particular procedure for aggregating preferences. 2/

as we currently aggregate preferences electorally, the near-universality of the dispreference for even a moderate inflation overrides a much more intense dispreference for own-unemployment or unemployment risk that is concentrated over a small share of the public. 3/

a social welfare function more consistent with your and my moral intuitions would prefer a moderate inflation to devastating the lives of a sizable minority of the population. 4/

there's nothing wrong with "people" or "the people" in this. people are supposed to vote their values and interests, not be philosopher kings who've given complex policy abstractions deep thought. 5/

most people can't adjudicate the policy tradeoffs between inflation and unemployment risk, whether policy is calibrated to trade-off those risks in a way that accords with their moral values. they can perceive their own pain. 6/

our problem, in most things, is that our electoral system basically doesn't allow people to vote non-cartoonish values. neither D or R can make a "trust me, we'll devote policy competence to adjudicating this moral dilemma in a manner consistent with your values and respectful of your interests." 7/

so each of us votes our own pain (or pleasure), regardless of the intensity of others' pain and pleasure, and the social-welfare-function that gets maximized prefers, in an arithmetically obvious way, concentrated pain over shared burden. /fin