Re: Europe's worst ever floods linked to poor land management
--- john hull [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you seem to be suggesting that policy makers are benefiting the present at the expense of the future, yet couldn't one could accuse you of wanting to benefit the future at the expense of the present? One could accuse me thusly, but the accusation would not be warranted. My belief is that a pure free market would bias neither the present nor the future. It seems like the balanced position would be to accept the consequences of the 100 year flood for the benefit of 99 years of prosperity and growth. There can be too much investment in disaster prevention, but I have not seen any cost/benefit analysis indicating that the governmental river policies in Europe have been optimal. The same applies to US and Chinese policy. At any rate, if prosperity and growth are the goals, none of the European countries have tax and regulatory policies that maximize it, so the evidence is that there are other goals and preferences that have higher priority for the policy makers. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Europe's worst ever floods linked to poor land management
Two points 1: It is my belief that in a free market for river management (no government meddling) common law practises would evolve, stipulating how to resolve cases where activities upstream causes havoc downstream (whether this take the form of pollution, flooding or whatever) 2: I seem to recall that heavy flooding in the Mississippi / Missouri area led to a reversal of the let's build a protective dike and thus move the problem down stream-policy. Large areas (including whole villages) were essentially given up and left open for future flooding, thus taking the pressure off the river further down. Can anybody confirm this? - jacob braestrup --- john hull [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you seem to be suggesting that policy makers are benefiting the present at the expense of the future, yet couldn't one could accuse you of wanting to benefit the future at the expense of the present? One could accuse me thusly, but the accusation would not be warranted. My belief is that a pure free market would bias neither the present nor the future. It seems like the balanced position would be to accept the consequences of the 100 year flood for the benefit of 99 years of prosperity and growth. There can be too much investment in disaster prevention, but I have not seen any cost/benefit analysis indicating that the governmental river policies in Europe have been optimal. The same applies to US and Chinese policy. At any rate, if prosperity and growth are the goals, none of the European countries have tax and regulatory policies that maximize it, so the evidence is that there are other goals and preferences that have higher priority for the policy makers. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- NeoMail - Webmail
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
fabio guillermo rojas wrote: screwed-up institution. The outcome of democracy depends on the overall rationality of public opinion, but whatever outcome you get can be equally enjoyed by the rational and irrational alike. My question isn't about the quality of policy, but the difference between what the institution produces and what the median voter wants. It's easy for me to believe that voters are irrational, but it's harder for me to believe that every policy closely matches the MV. Why? What are the biggest unpopular policies that persist? Let me elaborate my question: isn't is possible than when voters put faith in some set of rules for generating policy that the outputs may be far from the MV? Fabio If I understand you, my paper talked about this too. If voters put an irrationally high level of trust in their leaders, this might give their leaders the slack to pursue their own agenda. The doctrine of papal infallibility is the extreme case - if your clientele considers you infallible, you obviously have a lot of slack! But it is plausible to see this as a special case of the MV. The only twist is that the median voter implicitly says My preference is whatever his preference is, within some limits. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
Fred Foldvary wrote: --- Bryan D Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The outcome of democracy depends on the overall rationality of public opinion, but whatever outcome you get can be equally enjoyed by the rational and irrational alike. Does this not depend on the structure and method of voting? For example, would not the demand revelation method remedy the problem? It makes those who change the outcome pay the social cost. If I remember correctly, demand revelation mechanisms are useless if the probability of decisiveness is low and voters get some direct utility from expressive voting or holding irrational beliefs. Thus, suppose I get a $10 direct expressive benefit from voting for tons of useless health care spending, and the probability of decisiveness is 1-in-a-million. I don't see how any demand revelation mechanism is going to help. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
RE: how to eliminate unemployement
From: Fred Foldvary [EMAIL PROTECTED] In which case you yourself are 80% Georgist, because if taxes there be not, then landowners will bear the major cost of infrastructure now paid for by the taxation of labor and capital. That will deflate their land value, now puffed up by the capitalization of neighborhood benefits they don't pay for. The rent would be collected by the private providers, but such rent-based public finance is Georgist nonetheless. This is how condominiums, homeowner associations, hotels, and other real-estate complexes operate today, so this is not just hypothetical. We're on the same page here--a great deal of what is called differential rent or economic rent is simply the effect of government spending, public goods that could be internalized. Even so, there would still probably be a lot of economic rent resulting from differences in fertility, site advantages in urban areas, etc. Where Georgists and mutualists differ, I think, is in the relative importance of economic rent versus absentee landlord rent. Tucker believed that eliminating absentee landlordism and making occupancy and use the basis of property claims would be sufficient to eliminate most of the inequities, and that economic rent should be tolerated as a necessary evil. I think the absentee ownership of land seriously exacerbates economic rent in urban areas. If the tenants (not only apartment dwellers, but small business people) of slumlords, real estate speculators, etc., ceased to pay rent, and if vacant lots could be homesteaded by the first occupier, that would be a massive change for the better, even if occupants were able to draw unearned benefits from advantage of site. Presumably you do not disagree with the central aim of Georgism, free trade. Oh, you got that right! _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Interesting Survey
Another fascinating study from the Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org/content/archive/1383/gender.pdf I especially like the contrast between answers to question 3 and 4. Most people think changing gender roles are worse for most people, but most people think these changes have benefited themselves! There is a great section on behavioral changes to sexual harassment laws. People admit a surprisingly high degree of elasticity. Question 19 reveals a large belief gap on the biological basis of gender differences. Most men still go with upbringing, but males are much more willing to go with biology. Questions 13 and 14 uncover a nice self-interest component in attitudes to sexual harassment laws. 60% of males don't want stronger laws; 60% of women do. This nicely fits my simple theory of self-interest effects: Namely, that they mostly appear on issues like smoking and other things that get in your personal space. It's not the dollar value of the issue so much as its immediacy and intrusiveness. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
RE: how to eliminate unemployement; land tax user-fees
From: Grey Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] User-fees are an excellent idea, but I don't think incompatible with a Lib-Georgist land value tax: Who supports the judiciary? Who supports the Dept. of War? er, Defense? -- property owners, who need/use local police and international police, as well as courts, to defend their property rights. If, hypothetically speaking, all public goods could be internalized, and paid for with user fees, what public domain would be left to fund with land taxes? In the case of law enforcement, decentralize it to the smallest local level, place it under direct democratic control, and make its services voluntary and based on user fees. I suspect the need for any kind of law enforcement in a heavily armed society would be much less (look at the anecdotal evidence about Kennesaw, Ga.). And a decentralized, cooperatively-controlled police force could be combined with aspects of the current neighborhood watch system, posse comitatus, etc., in ways that would drastically reduce cost. As for defense, a decentralized, stateless society would present few concentrated targets of value to foreign predators; it would have no central government to surrender; and local citizens' militias, federated as needed, would make any enemy so clueless as to invade pay rent in blood for every square foot of land occupied. Let maritime merchants pay the cost of their own convoy systems against piracy. The rest of the foreign threats the U.S. military defends against, it seems to me, all involve what some power on the other side of the globe might do within a few hundred miles of its own border. I personally support smaller, annual fee-taxes, rather than less frequent, much larger transaction fees (eg. house ownership transfer fee of some $40 000), for such night watchman state funding. BTW, I like the comparison of a minarchist night watchman state with the current, and increasing, nanny state. (If you want to get infected with that linguistic meme.) Words and phrases are important, I doubt that we can change public schools into gov't schools, but if that gov't label had been given earlier, it might have stuck, and would certainly be easier to reform now. That's the word I like to use, but it gets me labelled as one of them militia nuts--odd, since I have an IWW sticker on my car. Finally, I also favor user-fees on pollution. I think that land-tax and pollution tax can, and should, replace all personal income tax. My desire for companies to pay for the benefit of corporate limited liability makes me hesitate to elliminate the corporate income tax altogether, but reducing it, certainly. Interesting--how would the pollution-fees be assessed, and pollution measured? Through some kind of libertarian tort law? On the issue of limited liability, Rothbard argued that it could be established (vis a vis creditors) without any state, simply by including it up front in the terms of the contract. Limited tort liability, he said, was of relatively minor importance. In the case of a few industries, of course, (the nuclear power industry in particular), they almost certainly couldn't survive without the state's intervention to limit their liability. Good riddance! _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: Europe's worst ever floods linked to poor land management
oops. Make that more dikes rather than fewer.
Re: Celeb Pay-or-Homer's Insight
At dinner last night, I posed a similar to question to a few of my friends. I noted that MTV once held a contest to be the next MTV veejay, and that the winner got his (or her?) requisite however-long stint -- but the runner up actually got a full-time veejay job out of the deal. Would this happen with American Idol? My friends all agreed that it was indeed probable. I think the same thing holds true for American Idol, Survivor, etc. Winning it isn't the ultimate prize, necessarily -- making it to the finals is about as good. That and the baseball analogy would lead me to believe that the key is not so much victory, but exposure. At some point -- probably the top 5 or 10 for American Idol -- the candidates are on TV so often that they become household names. They've hit some sort of saturation point for marketability, and when/if the record companies or whomever recognize this, they get contracts commensurate to this level. Dan Lewis At 10:26 PM 8/25/02 -0700, john hull wrote: Consider another metaphore: American Idol. The final ten, if not the final fifty, were virtually indistinguishable. Yeah, individual differences existed, but they were just variations on a theme. One wins, but that's the contest rules. What rules make Britney such a big winner? Why not squeeze Normandie into the cute-blonde market with Christina, Jessica, Mandy, and Britney? It makes me question the baseball metaphore, but only slightly. My meditation leads me to think that maybe the cute-blonde market is a Cournot game. There's an optimal number of cute-blondes on the market and the record industry has found the equilibrium.
Re: Europe's worst ever floods linked to poor land management
In a message dated 8/26/02 11:34:01 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2: I seem to recall that heavy flooding in the Mississippi / Missouri area led to a reversal of the let's build a protective dike and thus move the problem down stream-policy. Large areas (including whole villages) were essentially given up and left open for future flooding, thus taking the pressure off the river further down. Can anybody confirm this? - jacob braestrup I lived in Iowa during the last great flood there and while there was some talk of abandoning the dikes, there was also talk about building more of them. People tended to see all the water and want more dikes rather than less. David Levenstam
Inter-racial Adoption
In a post a while back, I maintained that restrictions on inter-racial adoption seemed like a pretty clear violation of the Median Voter theorem. I found some data at: http://www.kff.org/content/2001/3143/RacialBiracialToplines.pdf Question 36 reveals that 79%+ respondents of ALL races say that race should NOT be a factor. Blacks are even less against inter-racial adoption than other races - 84% say race should not be a factor. (I'm pretty sure that black leaders would poll very differently, though). You could say people are too scared/ashamed to say what they really think, but could that really flip 80% for to 51% against? Highly implausible. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: how to eliminate unemployement
Kevin Carson wrote: I think the absentee ownership of land seriously exacerbates economic rent in urban areas. If the tenants (not only apartment dwellers, but small business people) of slumlords, real estate speculators, etc., ceased to pay rent, and if vacant lots could be homesteaded by the first occupier, that would be a massive change for the better, even if occupants were able to draw unearned benefits from advantage of site. What about the effect of this on the incentive to develop and build in the first place? Not to mention the incentive to relocate? A nice way to eliminate unearned benefits is to eliminate the existence of benefits. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
Thus, suppose I get a $10 direct expressive benefit from voting for tons of useless health care spending, and the probability of decisiveness is 1-in-a-million. I don't see how any demand revelation mechanism is going to help. Prof. Bryan Caplan If someone states a value of $10 not because he wants the health care spending but because he enjoys stating that value, then it seems to me that the person is willing to pay that amount even if for that odd reason, and so his statement of value would be just as significant as one who actually values the health care. If the average cost, say for mosquito abatement, would be $5, and that person states he would pay up to $10 for it, then he is knowingly contributing to the total stated value, and if the total value exceeds the cost, is willing to pay the $10, regardless of his reason. All we really should care about is how much he is willing to pay. There can be all sorts of reasons why one would favor a program. One could, for example, favor a freeway because he thinks it helps birds navigate, even if in fact it does not. No matter, he is willing to put up bucks, and that is what counts. The whole point of demand revelation is that one's true subjective value is unknown, and so is the reason for it. All we can know is the stated value, and that is sufficient, and makes it superior to majority voting. After all, someone could vote for a Democrat candidate because he likes the sound of the candidate's name, so there are odd reasons why people vote in any system. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
Actually, I'm in the process of writing up a short article for Public Choice on this topic (as Bryan may recall). If expressive voting theory holds, and if expressive benefits are increasing in the amount of money voted under the Tideman-Tullock procedure, then the demand revelation process should induce worse outcomes than the current system. Specifically, people who have the strongest preferences are accorded only one vote each in the current system. Under the demand revelation process, their influence will be magnified relative to more instrumentally-oriented voters. Under the demand-revealing process, if my vote is decisive in changing the outcome, I have to pay an amount equal to the amount of my dollar vote that was necessary to swing the outcome: say that $1 million votes for option A and my $20,000 vote was enough to generate $1,010,000 in votes for B; then I owe a tax of $10,000. Say that I get expressive benefits of $1000 by telling everyone I've put in a bid of $10,000 for policy option A under the demand revealing process. So long as my chances of being decisive are less than 1/10, it's rational for me to bid $10,000 and gain the $1000 in expressive benefits. In equilibrium, the people with the strongest expressive preferences bid the most and none of them are likely to be decisive, and outcomes are worse than under a one-man one-vote system, so long as expressive preferences diverge from instrumental preferences (which Bryan's work strongly suggests). Eric Crampton On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Bryan Caplan wrote: If I remember correctly, demand revelation mechanisms are useless if the probability of decisiveness is low and voters get some direct utility from expressive voting or holding irrational beliefs. Thus, suppose I get a $10 direct expressive benefit from voting for tons of useless health care spending, and the probability of decisiveness is 1-in-a-million. I don't see how any demand revelation mechanism is going to help. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
RE: how to eliminate unemployement; land tax user-fees
--- Kevin Carson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As for defense, a decentralized, stateless society would present few concentrated targets of value to foreign predators; it would have no central government to surrender; Tell that to the American Indians. and local citizens' militias, federated as needed, OK, but federated implies unified. Ultimate authority is decentralized, as the lower units may secede, but the militias are unified into a federated whole that then can indeed provide continent-wide defense. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
Fred Foldvary wrote: Thus, suppose I get a $10 direct expressive benefit from voting for tons of useless health care spending, and the probability of decisiveness is 1-in-a-million. I don't see how any demand revelation mechanism is going to help. Prof. Bryan Caplan If someone states a value of $10 not because he wants the health care spending but because he enjoys stating that value, then it seems to me that the person is willing to pay that amount even if for that odd reason, and so his statement of value would be just as significant as one who actually values the health care. No, the point is that might *really* get a $10 benefit from SAYING you get a $1 M benefit. If your probability of decisiveness is under 1-in-100,000, it would pay to do so. But the social cost of this behavior could drastically exceed the private benefit. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Fred Foldvary wrote: If the average cost, say for mosquito abatement, would be $5, and that person states he would pay up to $10 for it, then he is knowingly contributing to the total stated value, and if the total value exceeds the cost, is willing to pay the $10, regardless of his reason. All we really should care about is how much he is willing to pay. There can be all sorts of reasons why one would favor a program. One could, for example, favor a freeway because he thinks it helps birds navigate, even if in fact it does not. No matter, he is willing to put up bucks, and that is what counts. The important point is that there's a disjoint between the willingness to pay and the actual payment: an expressed vote preference, even in the dollar terms of the Tideman-Tullock procedure, leads only probabilistically to actual requirements to pay the amount. If the expressive voter is risk neutral, faces a 1/million chance of being decisive and having to pay, and derives expressive benefits of $1 from saying I like poor children so much, I just voted $1 million in favour of program X that will help the poor, the voter will reveal a preference of one million dollars for program X. Of course, risk aversion will mitigate this somewhat, but if inefficient programs give larger expressive benefits, then instituting the Tideman-Tullock procedure will lead to worse outcomes. Eric
Re: Median Voter and Sampling
fabio guillermo rojas wrote: Any decent treatment of the MV states that it is the median *actual* voter who matters, not the median *potential* voter. It's the Median VOTER theorem, not the Median CITIZEN theorem, or the Median SENTIENT BEING theorem. I still think this is true but still misleading. Consider how American politicians succeed - first, they must fund raise and win the favor of party big wigs; then they must must survive a round of primaries; then they must survive the general election. We have at least three successive rounds of MVT. This suggests that policies are probably tailored to one of these three audiences. Thus, I find that arguments of the form survey X says people hate policy Y really miss the point. For there to be a real puzzle, you have to show how policy Y is not preferred by party activists, primary voters and general voters. Ie, you have to understand how institutions partition voters into specific groups. There are several levels of puzzlement. Puzzle #1: The median voter disapproves of existing policy. Puzzle #2: The median voter, primary voters, and party activists ALL disapprove of existing policy. I don't think there are many good examples of #1. There are even fewer good examples of #2. Can you think of any? So what are you getting at? Since there is a series of elections, each with a different median voter, the MVT doesn't actually predict that the median general voter gets his way? Or what? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
--- Eric Crampton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If expressive voting theory holds, and if expressive benefits are increasing in the amount of money voted under the Tideman-Tullock procedure, then the demand revelation process should induce worse outcomes than the current system. Specifically, people who have the strongest preferences are accorded only one vote each in the current system. Under the demand revelation process, their influence will be magnified relative to more instrumentally-oriented voters. First of all, the demand-revealing method does not require that the identities of the persons stating a value be public. Each voter can be given a password, and he enters a stated value on a web site. The administrator of the system knows his identity, but this is not public knowledge. The voter can then express anything he likes, just as in a secret ballot. But even if his expression reflects his stated value, he is still deriving utility from the good. Why does it matter the reason for the utility? In equilibrium, the people with the strongest expressive preferences bid the most and none of them are likely to be decisive, and outcomes are worse than under a one-man one-vote system, What matters is that the voter is willing to pay the average cost of the good plus the expected social cost of being pivotal. Suppose a community is voting for a public sculpture. One may not really want to have a sculpture, but one gets esteem from the approval one gets from expressing support for the arts. Suppose further that one gets disutility from not voting in accord with one's public expression. The statue is still providing utility, although in an indirect way, as those who get utility from approval of expression still obtained that utility from the sculpture. It is like admitting an Albanian into your club. The members don't really like Albanians, but they are proud of being regarded as appreciative of ethnic diversity, so they all vote to let in the Albanian. They all feel good about being diverse, so admitting the Albanian was rational after all. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
--- Eric Crampton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The important point is that there's a disjoint between the willingness to pay and the actual payment: Since the relevant comparitive system is majority voting, there is a disjoint in yes-no voting as well. The disjoint is even greater, since with demand revelation, each person pays the average cost, whereas with voting, the cost is paid from arbitrary taxation. We need to fold in the revenue aspect. If the majority voting is tied to a head tax, then there is still a disjoint, because given cost C/N, the a person votes yes if his value is C/N, but this does not reflect the intensity of his desire. faces a 1/million chance of being decisive But it can be questionned whether the probability is known. In the pure case, we don't know at all what values other will state. If probabilities are known, how do we know them? The method of knowing has to be included. If it is known by fiat, this injects the outcome in advance. saying I like poor children so much, I just voted $1 million in favour of program X that will help the poor, the voter will reveal a preference of one million dollars for program X. Of course, risk aversion will mitigate this somewhat, but if inefficient programs give larger expressive benefits, then instituting the Tideman-Tullock procedure will lead to worse outcomes. This presumes (1) the ballots are not secret or else that they are secret and people express the truth, (2) probabilities of paying the social cost (Clarke tax) are known, (3) the utility derived from expression and wining does not count. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
No, the point is that might *really* get a $10 benefit from SAYING you get a $1 M benefit. If your probability of decisiveness is under 1-in-100,000, it would pay to do so. But the social cost of this behavior could drastically exceed the private benefit. Prof. Bryan Caplan Right. But we need to do a complete comparative systems: 1) how prevalent is expressive voting, empirically? 2) does expressive voting still apply in secret ballots? 3) how do we get the probabilities of decisiveness? If the total values are close to the cost, the likelyhood of being decisive rises. It seems to me that in pure demand revelation, the probability is unknown and unknowable. When we add the probabilities, we mix in that with demand revelation, and it becomes a different system. When we inject a fiat probability such as 1/100K, then we have rigged the outcome. A premise of pure demand revelation is that the subjective values of others are unknown, and stated values could be lies. The person stating a value of $1 million has no way of knowing what the stated values of the others will be. He just knows the size of the voting pool and the cost of the public good. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Fred Foldvary wrote: First of all, the demand-revealing method does not require that the identities of the persons stating a value be public. Each voter can be given a password, and he enters a stated value on a web site. The administrator of the system knows his identity, but this is not public knowledge. The voter can then express anything he likes, just as in a secret ballot. I haven't argued that the inefficiency would arise from a public ballot, though that could make things worse, certainly. We currently have a secret ballot, but people still feel the urge to go and make their mark rather than just pretend as though they had. Expressive benefits seem to key into a few things, not least of which is a person's own self-image. Voting for a candidate that expresses values with which a voter wishes to identify gives But even if his expression reflects his stated value, he is still deriving utility from the good. Why does it matter the reason for the utility? Because of the divergence of private and social costs inherent in the voting act. What matters is that the voter is willing to pay the average cost of the good plus the expected social cost of being pivotal. Even under the demand revealing process the voter has an exceedingly small chance of being pivotal. So, massive social waste can be approved by majority vote because of the relatively small expressive benefits attached to voting for the inefficient program. If the voter knew ex ante that he would be pivotal, then your statement above would be correct. But, voters each are not likely to be pivotal, and each one knows it at some level. Suppose a community is voting for a public sculpture. One may not really want to have a sculpture, but one gets esteem from the approval one gets from expressing support for the arts. Suppose further that one gets disutility from not voting in accord with one's public expression. The statue is still providing utility, although in an indirect way, as those who get utility from approval of expression still obtained that utility from the sculpture. Sure, but the argument regarding expressive voting is that that utility is lower than the utility that could have been derived from alternate use of the funds that were used to construct the statue. Let's say that each person gets $5 worth of expressive utility from voting for statue construction. The average cost to each voter if the statue is constructed is $50. And, each voter gets $3 worth of direct utility from looking at the constructed statue. Since no voter is decisive, each voter votes for the statue constructionm in order to get the $5 in expressive benefits. Net social waste per voter is $42. I'm not denying that people get utility from expressing their preferences; I am arguing that they're in a massive PD game that leads to an inefficient outcome. ERic It is like admitting an Albanian into your club. The members don't really like Albanians, but they are proud of being regarded as appreciative of ethnic diversity, so they all vote to let in the Albanian. They all feel good about being diverse, so admitting the Albanian was rational after all. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter vs. The Sub-optimal Equilibria
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Fred Foldvary wrote: Since the relevant comparitive system is majority voting, there is a disjoint in yes-no voting as well. Agree with you so far The disjoint is even greater, since with demand revelation, each person pays the average cost, whereas with voting, the cost is paid from arbitrary taxation. We need to fold in the revenue aspect. If the majority voting is tied to a head tax, then there is still a disjoint, because given cost C/N, the a person votes yes if his value is C/N, but this does not reflect the intensity of his desire. Why are we assuming that instituting the demand revealing process would get us to uniform average-cost taxation? But it can be questionned whether the probability is known. In the pure case, we don't know at all what values other will state. If probabilities are known, how do we know them? The method of knowing has to be included. If it is known by fiat, this injects the outcome in advance. Tullock speculates in the article that the total amount taxed through the demand revealing process would be quite low, which implies that the probability of being decisive will also be quite low. In any case, after a few such elections, it seems likely that the total amounts bid and the total amounts collected would be public knowledge, and if the total amount collected were indeed a very small fraction of the total amount bid, people would rightly conclude that the probability of decisiveness is low. Additionally, many issues enjoy reasonably broad public support. For any such issues, it would be a rather safe bet to assume that one's dollar vote wouldn't be decisive. This presumes (1) the ballots are not secret or else that they are secret and people express the truth, (2) probabilities of paying the social cost (Clarke tax) are known, (3) the utility derived from expression and wining does not count. 1) neither is necessarily assumed. All expressive benefit could simply be internal to the voter: the voter expressing to himself what kind of person he is. Expressive voting in that case helps build self-image. But, we currently do have a secret ballot, and expressive preferences still reign. 2) They need not be known with certainty. They just have to be known to be relatively low. 3) Not true. Those benefits just have to be lower than social cost to get an inefficient outcome. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Median Voter and Sampling
In a message dated 8/26/02 6:33:51 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There are several levels of puzzlement. Puzzle #1: The median voter disapproves of existing policy. Puzzle #2: The median voter, primary voters, and party activists ALL disapprove of existing policy. I don't think there are many good examples of #1. There are even fewer good examples of #2. Can you think of any? So what are you getting at? Since there is a series of elections, each with a different median voter, the MVT doesn't actually predict that the median general voter gets his way? Or what? During the 1990s large supermajorities of American voters indicated a preference for Congressional term limits, while large supermajorities of representatives and senators opposed term limits. At the same time, however, voters often reelected their own representatives and senators, suggesting that perhaps the appeal of term limits came from the notion of getting rid of someone else's representative. I'm not familiar with the median voter theorem, but perhaps the median voter in Mass wanted term limits to get rid of Jesse Helms, while the median voter in NC almost certainly wanted term limits to get rid of Ted Kennedy. (I recall, however, that most of the support for term limits came from the political right, so perhaps something else entirely contributed to the appeal of term limits, in which case it would serve as a good example of an issue on which policy different substantially from what the median voter wanted.) David Levenstam
Re: Europe's worst ever floods linked to poor land management
Good points. Thanks. -jsh --- Fred Foldvary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- john hull [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you seem to be suggesting that policy makers are benefiting the present at the expense of the future, yet couldn't one could accuse you of wanting to benefit the future at the expense of the present? One could accuse me thusly, but the accusation would not be warranted. My belief is that a pure free market would bias neither the present nor the future. It seems like the balanced position would be to accept the consequences of the 100 year flood for the benefit of 99 years of prosperity and growth. There can be too much investment in disaster prevention, but I have not seen any cost/benefit analysis indicating that the governmental river policies in Europe have been optimal. The same applies to US and Chinese policy. At any rate, if prosperity and growth are the goals, none of the European countries have tax and regulatory policies that maximize it, so the evidence is that there are other goals and preferences that have higher priority for the policy makers. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
Re: Celeb Pay-or-Homer's Insight
--- Dan Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At dinner last night [T]hey get contracts commensurate to this level. I agree with you almost entirely. While a guaranteed record contract for the winning 'Idol' surely has some value, for example, it's probably not as much of a boost as getting to the finals, like you wrote. But for music stars record companies can create their own hype. Suppose I own the Scipio Recording Concern, marketing to lovers of pop music and military history, I could have had a casting call and found some marketable people who I could have then injected into the market with the appropriate media blitz. In baseball there are only so many available short-stop positions, but for music the field is very wide**. Now consider Vanilla Ice. This guy had only one hit, yet a VH-1 documentary revealed that he has a small fleet of expensive sports cars and an impressive mansion to boot. That's alot of bread. As owner of SRC I would say, Hey, let's get more people into the pop-rap market, and flood the market until SRC's profits from pop-rap artists are just equal to the cost of my media blitz to enter a new artist into the market. It seems to me that that optimum point should be well in excess of what is currently on the market. Hence Normandie Shields exclusion from the market. It seems like I, as head of SRC, should be flooding the market until there are so many artists that each doesn't make a king's ransom. Real record companies don't do that. Why not? I think I've assumed an answer to my initial question by asking why record companies don't put more singers/musicians on the market. Maybe it's not up to them. **It could be constrained, for example by the amount of available air time on radio stations--thus limiting the market size. I feel like I'm being stubborn by refusing to accept possible answers. That's not my intent. Best regards, jsh = ...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong. -Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
RE: how to eliminate unemployement; land tax user-fees
From: Fred Foldvary [EMAIL PROTECTED] As for defense, a decentralized, stateless society would present few concentrated targets of value to foreign predators; it would have no central government to surrender; Tell that to the American Indians. OK, adding the proviso that the defenders have better than neolithic technology. The civilian population of North America has more small arms than all the regular armies in the world, I read somewhere. And there's a lot of folks in places like the northern Rockies states (and here in the Ozarks) with HAM radio networks, night vision equipment, and lots of how-to stuff by Kurt Saxon. and local citizens' militias, federated as needed, OK, but federated implies unified. Ultimate authority is decentralized, as the lower units may secede, but the militias are unified into a federated whole that then can indeed provide continent-wide defense. But how does a loose federation of local militias, organized from the bottom up, alter my point about the need for taxation? _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
