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] > > >
