I think it is within a government’s legitimate sphere of power to legislate against sufficiently widespread wastage of important resources, even if those resources are legally acquired by their owner.
The problem is, once you get past the poverty line, additional money doesn’t make you all that much happier. If you’re well past it, anything you do with your money is wasting it. If you stop them from wasting it, you’re just stopping them from earning much money. You’ll destroy incentives. There’s no reason to stop them from wasting resources in one way if it just means that they’ll waste them in another.
We don’t have to choose between the extremes of allowing people to do whatever they want with their resources (as long as they don’t use them to directly harm people) or legislating against any socially suboptimal usage of resources. I think people should have quite a bit of freedom to use their resources the way they want, precisely because we don’t want to disincentivize people from working, and also because a government that is constantly monitoring its citizens to ensure socially optimal resource usage would be unbearably intrusive. But I also think there are cases where the benefits of government intervention outweigh these costs.
Where exactly to draw the line is a difficult question, and there are a number of cases where I’m unsure whether a government mandate is advisable. However, there are also cases that are clearly on one side or another of the line. Banning all luxury consumption, for instance, is definitely a bad idea. I also think its pretty clear that mandating organ donation (perhaps with a religious exemption clause) is a good idea. In this case, the costs aren’t that great. I can’t see any disincentivization of productive behavior, and the additional intrusiveness required to adequately enforce the policy does not seem all that burdensome. And by all accounts the social benefits would be quite significant.
Since the government is hardly going to do the best possible thing with our money, my last comment was vastly exaggerated.
Even so, I don’t think people are generally expected to help others with their money. If they manage to do something particularly wasteful, you can tax them for it to make up for it.
I generally prefer the idea of subsidizing the stuff that does help people, but it works out the same if you add a tiny change in how you do income taxes.
Consider someone who is deciding whether to donate their money to Seeing Eye or use it to dig ditches and then fill them. Seeing Eye is less than 0.05% as effective as the Fred Hollows Foundation, so the difference in social optimality is less than 0.05% of what it could do.
This means that if they dig ditches and then fill them, they are less than 0.05% more wasteful than if they donate to Seeing Eye. Why not just move the line by 0.05%, and let them do whatever they want? You can just tax them an additional 0.05% to make up for it, and they’ll still end up with more incentive. For that matter, you’d probably save enough money on not bothering with regulation to make up for it.
It seems like digging ditches and then filling them is infinitely more wasteful than donating to Seeing Eye, since it makes an infinitely smaller difference, but that’s not really how it works. The difference is so small it’s lost in rounding.
i disagree with the kind of analysis you’re doing here. Just because a difference is a small percentage of the maximal possible difference does not mean it is a small difference. Suppose you have three mutually exclusive actions available to you: A—play video games all day, B—put in a small amount of effort that will ensure that malaria is eliminated, C—put in a moderate amount of effort that will ensure that everyone in the world lives forever without sickness or deprivation. As a percentage of what you could accomplish by doing C, the difference between doing A and doing B is negligible. But it seems absurd to say that the difference between doing A and doing B is so small that it doesn’t really matter. Sure, it’s small as a percentage, but it’s still a massive difference.
Of course, it still might be the case (in fact, it probably is the case) that in your particular example, the cost of intervention outweighs its benefits. But I have already granted that this is often the case. If your example was meant to provide a general argument against any government regulation of resource usage, I don’t see how it works.
Instead of discussing hypotheticals, why not talk about the actual policy under consideration: Do you think that the cost of a mandatory organ donation policy plausibly outweighs its benefits? If you don’t, do you have other non-consequentialist grounds for opposing the policy?
It doesn’t matter because you could add a rediculously tiny tax to make up the difference.
Also, I think it’s generally a good idea to give taxes and subsidies to get rid of externalities. If this is done correctly, it makes no difference at all how you spend your money.
The problem is, once you get past the poverty line, additional money doesn’t make you all that much happier. If you’re well past it, anything you do with your money is wasting it. If you stop them from wasting it, you’re just stopping them from earning much money. You’ll destroy incentives. There’s no reason to stop them from wasting resources in one way if it just means that they’ll waste them in another.
We don’t have to choose between the extremes of allowing people to do whatever they want with their resources (as long as they don’t use them to directly harm people) or legislating against any socially suboptimal usage of resources. I think people should have quite a bit of freedom to use their resources the way they want, precisely because we don’t want to disincentivize people from working, and also because a government that is constantly monitoring its citizens to ensure socially optimal resource usage would be unbearably intrusive. But I also think there are cases where the benefits of government intervention outweigh these costs.
Where exactly to draw the line is a difficult question, and there are a number of cases where I’m unsure whether a government mandate is advisable. However, there are also cases that are clearly on one side or another of the line. Banning all luxury consumption, for instance, is definitely a bad idea. I also think its pretty clear that mandating organ donation (perhaps with a religious exemption clause) is a good idea. In this case, the costs aren’t that great. I can’t see any disincentivization of productive behavior, and the additional intrusiveness required to adequately enforce the policy does not seem all that burdensome. And by all accounts the social benefits would be quite significant.
Since the government is hardly going to do the best possible thing with our money, my last comment was vastly exaggerated.
Even so, I don’t think people are generally expected to help others with their money. If they manage to do something particularly wasteful, you can tax them for it to make up for it.
I generally prefer the idea of subsidizing the stuff that does help people, but it works out the same if you add a tiny change in how you do income taxes.
Consider someone who is deciding whether to donate their money to Seeing Eye or use it to dig ditches and then fill them. Seeing Eye is less than 0.05% as effective as the Fred Hollows Foundation, so the difference in social optimality is less than 0.05% of what it could do.
This means that if they dig ditches and then fill them, they are less than 0.05% more wasteful than if they donate to Seeing Eye. Why not just move the line by 0.05%, and let them do whatever they want? You can just tax them an additional 0.05% to make up for it, and they’ll still end up with more incentive. For that matter, you’d probably save enough money on not bothering with regulation to make up for it.
It seems like digging ditches and then filling them is infinitely more wasteful than donating to Seeing Eye, since it makes an infinitely smaller difference, but that’s not really how it works. The difference is so small it’s lost in rounding.
i disagree with the kind of analysis you’re doing here. Just because a difference is a small percentage of the maximal possible difference does not mean it is a small difference. Suppose you have three mutually exclusive actions available to you: A—play video games all day, B—put in a small amount of effort that will ensure that malaria is eliminated, C—put in a moderate amount of effort that will ensure that everyone in the world lives forever without sickness or deprivation. As a percentage of what you could accomplish by doing C, the difference between doing A and doing B is negligible. But it seems absurd to say that the difference between doing A and doing B is so small that it doesn’t really matter. Sure, it’s small as a percentage, but it’s still a massive difference.
Of course, it still might be the case (in fact, it probably is the case) that in your particular example, the cost of intervention outweighs its benefits. But I have already granted that this is often the case. If your example was meant to provide a general argument against any government regulation of resource usage, I don’t see how it works.
Instead of discussing hypotheticals, why not talk about the actual policy under consideration: Do you think that the cost of a mandatory organ donation policy plausibly outweighs its benefits? If you don’t, do you have other non-consequentialist grounds for opposing the policy?
It doesn’t matter because you could add a rediculously tiny tax to make up the difference.
Also, I think it’s generally a good idea to give taxes and subsidies to get rid of externalities. If this is done correctly, it makes no difference at all how you spend your money.