[This message is being resent because some of you received a garbled version. Sorry. HB]  
  
With regard to Jim's point about suicide bombers and rationality.  They are maximising not
their lifetime utility but their expected eternal utility.  They do this not by acquiring
human capital but by acquiring heavenly capital.  If they expect with certainty that the
pay-off begins in time period t+1 (after the blast), and continues to t+ infinity, the
future does not even have to be discounted.  Can incentives intervene? Only by operating
on expectation formation.
     
Robert Leeson