But checking on a politician is an investment in your community with little personal return to yourself. It requires trust to think it will pay off to you.
Mancur Olson modelled it perfectly in The Logic Of Collective Action. 1000 people put 100 $1 bills or coins into a hat making it $100K and then someone steals $1000 out of it. What is more beneficial for you, to catch the thief and then you personally get your $1 back, or you, too, steal $1000 out of it? Setting morals aside, in the short run the second is better. The first one depends on the vague notion that if you let others fuck up the moral standards of your community, it cannot be beneficial for you in the long run. But this long run already requires trust. It already requires the belief the thief is an exception and not the norm: this is what is called trust. If you believe they all are thieves, low trust, your most efficient move is to steal too.
The mechanism can exist only a high-trust community where people think it is beneficial for them to prevent others for screwing up the common trust and moral standards. Once the standards and the trust both gets low, there can be no such mechanism.
The hat with the money is a good example because it shows how it easily becomes a death spiral, a race to the bottom, every single person you see stealing $1000 from the hate lowers the utility for you to chase them and raises the utility for you to do the same. There is a vicious circle, but no similar virtuous circle to bootstrap out of.
And I think my bootstap of fake trust is more like, if we really believe the other one will not steal from the hat, we feel less pressure for ourselves to do. The mechanism itself requires the trust that it is not the norm.
Again the model is this. If you are the first one to steal from the hat, the benefit is low—you don’t need that stolen money in a functional society, you can also earn it, and the cost is high: people will go after you. If you are the 20th one to steal from the hat, the benefit is high: you need a buffer of savings, actually earning money in a society like that is hard, and the cost low: why exactly would they go after you.
Fake trust is the noble lie telling people “you would be the first one to steal from the hat”. Get it?
BTW stable, pro-market cultures come from somewhere, not just time. It is not like human nature is hardwired to be cooperative with a million strangers—our instincts are more tribal. I think England or Denmark had it because of things like protestantism, or being generally on the winner side of history, but that is too long to explain maybe in another comment.
But checking on a politician is an investment in your community with little personal return to yourself. It requires trust to think it will pay off to you.
Right, but Denmark doesn’t rely on ordinary members of the community volunteering to check on the politician, with no thought of personal gain. Of course that won’t work. The solution is institutional—in other words, there are paid officials within government agencies who are responsible for these investigations, and laws and requirements for transparency, and so on.
You are making a fine argument as to why institutionless trust can’t scale. But whoever said it could? And your solutions don’t even solve your problems on their own terms. Why would a “noble lie” solve the problem with the hat? Won’t someone just steal anyway? The solution to the problem of the hat is a policeman.
OK. Maybe I am entirely clueless here, but I just don’t see how if you pay official A to keep check on official B how the heck they don’t instantly collude into a mafia the very second citizen volunteer vigilance stops keeping watch on them?
Here is one interesting thing. People with radical politics, anarchists, communists, libertarians, suchlike, tend to say precisely that, that yes, they collude. Even “conservative” Chesterton said every aristocracy is a mob with style (or something similar, not accurate quote).
People who are moderates and skeptical should probably think it happens to some extent all the time, but all the difference between the first world and the third is precisely the extent of it: preventing most of that collusion, preventing that one big political-business-criminal mafia “blob” from coming into existence and colonize the top echelons is what is the difference between functional and dysfunctional, improving and deteriorating places.
But instutions like playing one Ivy League windbag to keep check on basically his classmate cannot possibly work in themselves, they collude very easily. There must be some other kind of “trick” there.
Of course it’s possible for collusion to take place. So you have to make it hard for collusion to take place, you need failsafes. That’s why I didn’t just say “you need a guard” I talked about transparency and the legal regime. There are different ways this can work.
You are right that one element is to make sure that affinity networks (like Ivy League classmates or ethnic groupings) don’t get to colonize the top echelons. But there’s more to it than that. I think you need to look at the specific legal regimes in a bunch of Western countries, see how they work, and see how they set the incentives for actors within it. And then you’ll be able to explain why there’s more corruption in Ukraine than in Italy, and more in Italy than in England. And none of them are perfect, by the way.
You are right that one element is to make sure that affinity networks (like Ivy League classmates or ethnic groupings) don’t get to colonize the top echelons.
The UK works relatively well despite the huge portion of it’s leadership going to school in Eton and then going to college in Oxford or Cambridge.
But checking on a politician is an investment in your community with little personal return to yourself. It requires trust to think it will pay off to you.
That a fairly trivial look at why politicians get checked upon. It’s not useful to dismiss complex structures of accountability that evolved over decades in a way by assuming they work in a way that can be summarized in two sentences.
I don’t think simply the complexity of structures can prevent collusion between people with similar class and school backgrounds. This is one of the things in life that is simple: watchdogs, sheepdogs, need a personal incentive for catching wrongdoers, and the closer they are to each other culturally, the higher is the danger of old boys networds, the stronger this needs to be. I think complex structures are just a make-believe thing, ultimately it is still about whether I will incriminate some old buddy who I go regularly drinking with who works in a department of my organization a watchdog is or not. It is one of the things that is hard to do but the underlying logic is simple.
For example, Byzantine emperors made sure their bodyguards come from feuding Norse tribes, to prevent collusion (as a conspiracy to kil him). This is one of the simple ways of doing so. If it was on me, I would try putting people from lower-class backgrounds who are very, very suspicious and disliking of silver spoon folks into watchdog positions.
But checking on a politician is an investment in your community with little personal return to yourself. It requires trust to think it will pay off to you.
Mancur Olson modelled it perfectly in The Logic Of Collective Action. 1000 people put 100 $1 bills or coins into a hat making it $100K and then someone steals $1000 out of it. What is more beneficial for you, to catch the thief and then you personally get your $1 back, or you, too, steal $1000 out of it? Setting morals aside, in the short run the second is better. The first one depends on the vague notion that if you let others fuck up the moral standards of your community, it cannot be beneficial for you in the long run. But this long run already requires trust. It already requires the belief the thief is an exception and not the norm: this is what is called trust. If you believe they all are thieves, low trust, your most efficient move is to steal too.
The mechanism can exist only a high-trust community where people think it is beneficial for them to prevent others for screwing up the common trust and moral standards. Once the standards and the trust both gets low, there can be no such mechanism.
The hat with the money is a good example because it shows how it easily becomes a death spiral, a race to the bottom, every single person you see stealing $1000 from the hate lowers the utility for you to chase them and raises the utility for you to do the same. There is a vicious circle, but no similar virtuous circle to bootstrap out of.
And I think my bootstap of fake trust is more like, if we really believe the other one will not steal from the hat, we feel less pressure for ourselves to do. The mechanism itself requires the trust that it is not the norm.
Again the model is this. If you are the first one to steal from the hat, the benefit is low—you don’t need that stolen money in a functional society, you can also earn it, and the cost is high: people will go after you. If you are the 20th one to steal from the hat, the benefit is high: you need a buffer of savings, actually earning money in a society like that is hard, and the cost low: why exactly would they go after you.
Fake trust is the noble lie telling people “you would be the first one to steal from the hat”. Get it?
BTW stable, pro-market cultures come from somewhere, not just time. It is not like human nature is hardwired to be cooperative with a million strangers—our instincts are more tribal. I think England or Denmark had it because of things like protestantism, or being generally on the winner side of history, but that is too long to explain maybe in another comment.
Right, but Denmark doesn’t rely on ordinary members of the community volunteering to check on the politician, with no thought of personal gain. Of course that won’t work. The solution is institutional—in other words, there are paid officials within government agencies who are responsible for these investigations, and laws and requirements for transparency, and so on.
You are making a fine argument as to why institutionless trust can’t scale. But whoever said it could? And your solutions don’t even solve your problems on their own terms. Why would a “noble lie” solve the problem with the hat? Won’t someone just steal anyway? The solution to the problem of the hat is a policeman.
OK. Maybe I am entirely clueless here, but I just don’t see how if you pay official A to keep check on official B how the heck they don’t instantly collude into a mafia the very second citizen volunteer vigilance stops keeping watch on them?
Here is one interesting thing. People with radical politics, anarchists, communists, libertarians, suchlike, tend to say precisely that, that yes, they collude. Even “conservative” Chesterton said every aristocracy is a mob with style (or something similar, not accurate quote).
People who are moderates and skeptical should probably think it happens to some extent all the time, but all the difference between the first world and the third is precisely the extent of it: preventing most of that collusion, preventing that one big political-business-criminal mafia “blob” from coming into existence and colonize the top echelons is what is the difference between functional and dysfunctional, improving and deteriorating places.
But instutions like playing one Ivy League windbag to keep check on basically his classmate cannot possibly work in themselves, they collude very easily. There must be some other kind of “trick” there.
Of course it’s possible for collusion to take place. So you have to make it hard for collusion to take place, you need failsafes. That’s why I didn’t just say “you need a guard” I talked about transparency and the legal regime. There are different ways this can work.
You are right that one element is to make sure that affinity networks (like Ivy League classmates or ethnic groupings) don’t get to colonize the top echelons. But there’s more to it than that. I think you need to look at the specific legal regimes in a bunch of Western countries, see how they work, and see how they set the incentives for actors within it. And then you’ll be able to explain why there’s more corruption in Ukraine than in Italy, and more in Italy than in England. And none of them are perfect, by the way.
Only institutional change can explain how (say) New York city governance moved from being incredibly corrupt in the 19th century to moderately corrupt in the mid-20th century to a bit corrupt today. It’s not because the population has become more “saintly,” and it’s not because of any “noble lie.” But it did require time.
The UK works relatively well despite the huge portion of it’s leadership going to school in Eton and then going to college in Oxford or Cambridge.
That a fairly trivial look at why politicians get checked upon. It’s not useful to dismiss complex structures of accountability that evolved over decades in a way by assuming they work in a way that can be summarized in two sentences.
I don’t think simply the complexity of structures can prevent collusion between people with similar class and school backgrounds. This is one of the things in life that is simple: watchdogs, sheepdogs, need a personal incentive for catching wrongdoers, and the closer they are to each other culturally, the higher is the danger of old boys networds, the stronger this needs to be. I think complex structures are just a make-believe thing, ultimately it is still about whether I will incriminate some old buddy who I go regularly drinking with who works in a department of my organization a watchdog is or not. It is one of the things that is hard to do but the underlying logic is simple.
For example, Byzantine emperors made sure their bodyguards come from feuding Norse tribes, to prevent collusion (as a conspiracy to kil him). This is one of the simple ways of doing so. If it was on me, I would try putting people from lower-class backgrounds who are very, very suspicious and disliking of silver spoon folks into watchdog positions.