TheGreatGodPan on 6/11/2006 at 01:40
Quote Posted by Paz
Hey, screw those naysayers - I completely support your decision not to vote.
And if you'd like to extend that non-participance to anything even vaguely likely to have a political impact, that would be swell.
What do you mean extend? That's what I'm doing now!
Javert4186 on 6/11/2006 at 04:38
GreatGodPan - PLEASE tell me you are an economist, as only an economist could believe that a) national welfare could be quantified in any legitimate way, or b) making people bet on public policy wouldn't immediately cause everyone to simply learn how to game the numbers (as corporations do now in terms of reporting quarterly earnings).
For fun, read anything by Daniel Khaneman, Amos Tversky, Robin Dawes, or Paul Gilovich to see how good people are at betting and speculation
TTK12G3 on 6/11/2006 at 13:02
Quote Posted by Gorgonseye
There is just no stopping you people.....I give up, carry on....
Just let RBJ and pavlovscat fight it out until one side decides to unsubscribe to the thread. Until then, you should probably take this opportunity to learn how grown-ups insult each other and why.
TheGreatGodPan on 6/11/2006 at 22:00
Quote Posted by Javert4186
GreatGodPan - PLEASE tell me you are an economist, as only an economist could believe that a) national welfare could be quantified in any legitimate way, or b) making people bet on public policy wouldn't immediately cause everyone to simply learn how to game the numbers (as corporations do now in terms of reporting quarterly earnings).
For fun, read anything by Daniel Khaneman, Amos Tversky, Robin Dawes, or Paul Gilovich to see how good people are at betting and speculation
I've actually only taken a micro class in high school for consumer ec credit, and I used the class as a study hall and didn't pay attention. I did get A.P credit for both micro and macro, even though I didn't take the latter because they allow you to take the test without taking the class. Economics is just an interest of mine. As a matter of fact I believe all normative questions are subjective, and I think the Austrians have the best conception of utility, which is that it is ordinal and not constant. Any two utility functions are incomparable and as a result there can be no meaningful aggregation into units of "utils" or whatnot. I don't happen to think behavioral/experimental economics where they test people by having them "bet" on certain things are all that relevant to regular economics because they have so little to do with the real world. As Rothbard pointed out, they don't even apply to actual gambling because they assume people do not enjoy the act of gambling, which they certainly do. Gamblers select themselves rather than being selected randomly, as should be done for an experiment. You should note that I merely said it was an interesting idea. Although I think prediction markets are pretty cool, his system still seems to allow for a good deal of room for politicians to screw it up.
There have been a lot of good pieces on the rationality of voting and whether or not people should vote popping up recently. (
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/11/election_predic.html) Michael Huemer argues for Caplan's view. I strongly dissagree with his assertions that values are objective though. (
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/11/the_mankiw_colu.html) Greg Mankiw, who himself admits to voting, says the rational thing to do if you are rationally ignorant about the candidates/issues is to not vote and rely on the wisdom of those who do vote. (
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/11/bryan_caplan_is.html) Tyler Cowen comments on Caplan's upcoming book and recent piece, as well as linking to commentary from Matt Yglesias and an old piece from himself. Finally, (
http://www.slate.com/id/2107240/) Stephen Landsburg in an old piece advises you play the lotto instead. In reply to Cowen's proposition about being the eleventh person in a firing squad full of perfect marksmen, I would do it. It's all about the margin rather than the average for me.
Javert4186 on 7/11/2006 at 03:33
I read whichever one is in The Slate. This "your vote only matters if it is the tie breaker" is a totally spurious argument that comes from the way they have modeled the problem. They basically assume that the only way a single vote can matter if it is the one that changes the majority. If you accept this, then rest of his probability argument follows from that (i.e., it would be rare that YOUR vote is that one) and makes sense. The problem is the first assumption; what matters is not the single "push you over the top" vote, but the collection of votes. This is because the state of a vote is dependent on the others, so to speak. Hanson is sort of arguing that each new vote cast makes all others irrelevant, which is wrong. This would be like saying the only bricks that matter in a wall are the ones on the top row.
His rejoinder, applied to my wall analogy, is to say that the other bricks will be there, so don't worry about yours not being there. This is like advocating free riding, or overuse in a commons dilemma. It is a fine strategy for one person that will lead to ruin as adoption of the strategy increases (i.e., a shitty long term strategy).
I DID however like Hanson's article on Creativity
(
http://hanson.gmu.edu/BusinessWeek-7-3-06.htm)
Lhet on 7/11/2006 at 04:39
I always find the puns kinda funny.
TheGreatGodPan on 7/11/2006 at 18:53
Quote Posted by Javert4186
I read whichever one is in The Slate. This "your vote only matters if it is the tie breaker" is a totally spurious argument that comes from the way they have modeled the problem. They basically assume that the only way a single vote can matter if it is the one that changes the majority. If you accept this, then rest of his probability argument follows from that (i.e., it would be rare that YOUR vote is that one) and makes sense. The problem is the first assumption; what matters is not the single "push you over the top" vote, but the collection of votes. This is because the state of a vote is dependent on the others, so to speak. Hanson is sort of arguing that each new vote cast makes all others irrelevant, which is wrong. This would be like saying the only bricks that matter in a wall are the ones on the top row.
His rejoinder, applied to my wall analogy, is to say that the other bricks will be there, so don't worry about yours not being there. This is like advocating free riding, or overuse in a commons dilemma. It is a fine strategy for one person that will lead to ruin as adoption of the strategy increases (i.e., a shitty long term strategy).
Economically speaking it IS rational to free-ride. If you don't, everyone else will and you get screwed over. Ever since Menger, Walras and Jevons economics has been about the margin. Unless you are actually changing how or whether other people vote (and how many do this?) you CAN assume the other votes are (or are not, since most don't vote) as they would be regardless of your action. I've read other people argue that even if your vote doesn't change the majority, giving a mandate or lending legitimacy to the government does (EDIT: that probably looked like I was saying mandates change majorities, when I meant to say that mandates affect policy). I don't really think that matters except in as far as politicians think look at the tallies as evidence of whether or not they can get a majority later on. The whole mandate/legitimacy argument sounds like more of that rationally irrational feel-good for being on some side and making symbolic action stuff.
I think I might have posted that one here earlier. I liked it as well. I remember Steve Sailer having a pretty good debunking of Richard Florida's "Creative Class" ideas, but I haven't been able to find it again.
BEAR on 7/11/2006 at 19:04
Am I the only one that cannot possibly read TGGP's posts? I dont know that he's wrong either, I just get about 1 sentence in and my eyes wont focus and I have to move on, its really odd. I think it corresponds to the number of links in the post as well.
mopgoblin on 7/11/2006 at 23:36
Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan
Unless you are actually changing how or whether other people vote (and how many do this?) you CAN assume the other votes are (or are not, since most don't vote) as they would be regardless of your action.
It's a bit more complicated than that. If it's a one-off election, and you haven't influenced anyone else's vote or been influenced by anyone else, then you're correct. But by making this argument, you're potentially influencing votes, so you're only correct if you're arguing after the fact, or if no one listens to you.
In reality, your argument is almost always wrong. For a start, the outcome of an election does affect future elections, even if the gap between first and second place is large. For example, if the candidates for the major parties get ten thousand and seven thousand votes respectively, how many votes does a minor party candidate need to get in order to be considered a serious contender next time around? Perhaps 5000 votes == viable, but 4999 votes == hopeless? No, it's a gradual thing, in which each vote has a small effect. That's how democracy is supposed to work, it's not about waiting around until you can be the heroic voter who single-handedly changes the outcome of an election.
The big problem with your argument is the scope, though. I'm going to assume we're talking about a hypothetical one-off election to avoid side-effects (I'm not sure if that's even possible, as the electorate will always remember things and will want to revisit any issue given a certain outcome, but for the sake of the argument...). You're talking about the choice in the context of an individual, but you're talking to multiple people, so the argument is now in the context of a group. The more people listen, the greater the difference in outcome between voting and not voting. The individual choices are <em>not</em> independent as they've now been influenced by a common factor, so the non-voting strategy no longer makes as much sense, and you'd be absolutely wrong if you managed to convince everyone.
