Your link provides very little evidence for your claim. At the national level, to say that a program costs $1 million per year is unimpressive. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the multiplier effect for mohair production is quite low, say, 0.5. I suspect that is it rather higher than that, since multiple people will go and card and weave and spin the damn fibers and then sell them to each other at art fairs, but let’s say it’s 0.5. That means you’re wasting $500,000 a year. In the context of a $5 trillion annual budget, you’re looking at 1 part per 10 million, or an 0.00001% increase in efficiency. Why should one of our 545 elected representatives, or even one of their 20,000 staffers, make this a priority to eliminate? The amazing thing is that the subsidy was eliminated at all, not that it crept back in. All systems have some degree of parasitism, ‘rent’, or waste. This is not exactly low-hanging fruit we’re talking about here.
More generally, I have worked for a few different politicians, and so far as I could tell, most of them mostly cared about figuring out better policies subject to maintaining a high probability of being re-elected. None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc. Those are just the cases that make the news. In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
Your link provides very little evidence for your claim.
What did you take my claim to be? The example in the link is intended to illustrate the fact that the problem of politics is not one of figuring out better policy. It is an example of a policy that is universally agreed to be bad and yet has persisted for over 60 years, despite a brief period in which it was temporarily stamped out. The magnitude of the subsidy in this case may be small but there are many thousands of such bad policies, some of much greater individual magnitude, and they add up. The example is intentionally a small and un-controversial example since it is intended to illustrate that if even minor bad policies like this are hard to kill then vastly larger ones are unlikely to be eliminated without structural reform.
None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc.
Giving this appearance is fairly important to succeeding as a politician so this is not indicative of much. I find it more relevant to judge by actual actions and results produced rather than by words or carefully cultivated appearances.
In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Indeed you can! Be aware, though, that memes about government corruption and the people who peddle them may have just as much power to fool you as the ‘official’ authorities. Hollywood, for example, has a much larger propaganda budget than the US Congress. When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
Also, beware of insulated arguments. If you assume that (a) politicians are amazingly good at disguising their motives, and (b) that politicians do in fact routinely disguise their motives, your assertions are empirically unfalsifiable. If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
An Inconvenient Truth? Seriously though, I don’t think Hollywood is particularly tough on politicians. It’s a major enabler for the cult of the presidency with heroic presidents saving the world from aliens,asteroids and terrorists. Evil corporations and businessmen get a far worse rap. The mainstream media is much too soft on politicians in the US in my opinion as well. Where’s the US Paxman?
If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
I think some politicians actually believe that they are acting for the ‘greater good’. Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing. It is sometimes easier to convince others when you believe your own spiel—this is well known in sales. They surely often think they are saving others from themselves by restricting their liberties and trampling on their rights. Ultimately what they really believe is somewhat irrelevant. I judge them by how they respond to incentives, whose interests they actually promote and what results they achieve.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
I agree with you that Hollywood is soft on Presidents, and that the mainstream media is soft on just about everyone, with the possible exception of people who might be robbing a convenience store and/or selling marijuana in your neighborhood, details at eleven.
That still leaves legislators, bureaucrats, administrators, police chiefs, mayors, governors, and military officers as Rent-A-Villains (tm) for Hollywood action flicks and dramas.
Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing.
From my end, it still looks like you’re starting with the belief that government is wrong, and deducing that politicians must be doing harm. Your arguments are sophisticated enough that I’m assuming you’ve read most of the sequences already, but you might want to review The Bottom Line.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions. I’m also unsure as to whether the LW community has any interest in reading a sustained duel about abstract versions of anarcholibertarianism and representative democracy. Worse, I at least sympathize with some of your arguments; my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty. For all those reasons, I’m not going to post on this particular thread in public for a few weeks. I will read and ponder one more public post on this thread by you, if any—I try to let opponents get in the last word whenever I move the previous question.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions.
I described myself as a socialist 10 years ago when I was at university. My parents are lifelong Labour) voters. I have changed my political views over time which gives me some confidence that I am open minded in my fundamental political assumptions. Caveats are that my big 5 personality factors are correlated with libertarian politics (suggesting I may be biologically hardwired to think that way) and from some perspectives I could be seen as following the cliched route of moving to the right in my political views as I get older.
my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty.
This is partly a stylistic thing—I feel that padding comments with disclaimers tends to detract from readability and distracts from the main point. I try to avoid saying things like in my opinion (should be obvious given I’m writing it) or variations on the theme of the balance of evidence leads me to conclude (where else would conclusions derive from) or making comments merely to remind readers that 0 and 1 are not probabilities (here of all places I hope that this goes without saying). I used to make heavy use of such caveats but I think they tend to increase verbiage without adding much information. If it helps, imagine that I’ve added all these disclaimers to anything I say as a footnote.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
Incentives (or incentive structures, like markets [1]) are the result of human decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
[1] A market’s incentives aren’t set in detail, but permitting the market to operate in public or not is the result of a relatively small number of decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
Part of the thinking behind competitive government is that we are the people who set the incentives.
Seasteading is explicitly designed to create alternative social systems that operate somewhat outside the boundaries of existing states. An analogy is trying to introduce revolutionary technologies by convincing a democratic majority to vote for your idea vs. founding a startup and taking the ‘if you build it they will come’ route. The latter approach generally appears to have a better track record.
Charter cities were born out of a slightly different agenda but embody similar principles.
A simple step that individuals can take is to move to a jurisdiction in line with their values rather than trying to change their current jurisdiction through the political process. Competition works to improve products in ordinary markets because customers take their business to the companies that best satisfy their preferences. Migration is one of the few forces that applies some level of competitive pressure to governments.
Other potential approaches are to support secession or devolution movements, things like the free state project, supporting the sovereignty of tax havens, ‘starving the beast’ by structuring your affairs to minimize the amount of tax you pay, personal offshoring and other direct individual action that creates competitive pressure on jurisdictions.
I think he’s talking from a government perspective or a perspective of power.
Obviously, you can educate people yjat malaria is bad and beg people to solve the problem of malaria. It is, however, possible to know a lot about and not do anything about it.
Or you could pay people a lot of money if they would show work that might help the problem of malaria. I tend to think this method would be more effective, although there are other effective incentives than money.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
The common form “I don’t believe in X, but X would be bad if it did exist” seems to me like a bad sign; of what, I’m not sure, perhaps motivated cognition.
It can be a bad pattern but there are cases where it is legitimate, for example “I don’t believe in the Christian god but if he did exist he would appear to be a major asshole.”
In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
It would either be polite or impolite to make explicit who the “some of the people” are that you refer to in this sentence, and what relevance this has to Mass_Driver’s remark. I am curious to hear which.
Mass_Driver appears to be one of the people who can be fooled all of the time since he judges politicians by what they say and how they present themselves rather than by what their actions say about their incentives and motivations. I did not intend to be ambiguous.
Thank you—I had suspected that might be your meaning, but I prefer not to pronounce negative judgments on people without clear cause, and I have read plenty of comments which appeared equally damning but were of an innocent nature upon elaboration. Carry on.
I appreciate your unusually deft grasp of the English language. Upvoted.
(I also appreciate the paucity of my education in the sociology of representative government, and must therefore bow out of the discussion. Please discount my opinion appropriately.)
Your link provides very little evidence for your claim. At the national level, to say that a program costs $1 million per year is unimpressive. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the multiplier effect for mohair production is quite low, say, 0.5. I suspect that is it rather higher than that, since multiple people will go and card and weave and spin the damn fibers and then sell them to each other at art fairs, but let’s say it’s 0.5. That means you’re wasting $500,000 a year. In the context of a $5 trillion annual budget, you’re looking at 1 part per 10 million, or an 0.00001% increase in efficiency. Why should one of our 545 elected representatives, or even one of their 20,000 staffers, make this a priority to eliminate? The amazing thing is that the subsidy was eliminated at all, not that it crept back in. All systems have some degree of parasitism, ‘rent’, or waste. This is not exactly low-hanging fruit we’re talking about here.
More generally, I have worked for a few different politicians, and so far as I could tell, most of them mostly cared about figuring out better policies subject to maintaining a high probability of being re-elected. None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc. Those are just the cases that make the news. In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
What did you take my claim to be? The example in the link is intended to illustrate the fact that the problem of politics is not one of figuring out better policy. It is an example of a policy that is universally agreed to be bad and yet has persisted for over 60 years, despite a brief period in which it was temporarily stamped out. The magnitude of the subsidy in this case may be small but there are many thousands of such bad policies, some of much greater individual magnitude, and they add up. The example is intentionally a small and un-controversial example since it is intended to illustrate that if even minor bad policies like this are hard to kill then vastly larger ones are unlikely to be eliminated without structural reform.
Giving this appearance is fairly important to succeeding as a politician so this is not indicative of much. I find it more relevant to judge by actual actions and results produced rather than by words or carefully cultivated appearances.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Indeed you can! Be aware, though, that memes about government corruption and the people who peddle them may have just as much power to fool you as the ‘official’ authorities. Hollywood, for example, has a much larger propaganda budget than the US Congress. When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
Also, beware of insulated arguments. If you assume that (a) politicians are amazingly good at disguising their motives, and (b) that politicians do in fact routinely disguise their motives, your assertions are empirically unfalsifiable. If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
An Inconvenient Truth? Seriously though, I don’t think Hollywood is particularly tough on politicians. It’s a major enabler for the cult of the presidency with heroic presidents saving the world from aliens, asteroids and terrorists. Evil corporations and businessmen get a far worse rap. The mainstream media is much too soft on politicians in the US in my opinion as well. Where’s the US Paxman?
I think some politicians actually believe that they are acting for the ‘greater good’. Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing. It is sometimes easier to convince others when you believe your own spiel—this is well known in sales. They surely often think they are saving others from themselves by restricting their liberties and trampling on their rights. Ultimately what they really believe is somewhat irrelevant. I judge them by how they respond to incentives, whose interests they actually promote and what results they achieve.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
Good examples!
I agree with you that Hollywood is soft on Presidents, and that the mainstream media is soft on just about everyone, with the possible exception of people who might be robbing a convenience store and/or selling marijuana in your neighborhood, details at eleven.
That still leaves legislators, bureaucrats, administrators, police chiefs, mayors, governors, and military officers as Rent-A-Villains (tm) for Hollywood action flicks and dramas.
From my end, it still looks like you’re starting with the belief that government is wrong, and deducing that politicians must be doing harm. Your arguments are sophisticated enough that I’m assuming you’ve read most of the sequences already, but you might want to review The Bottom Line.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions. I’m also unsure as to whether the LW community has any interest in reading a sustained duel about abstract versions of anarcholibertarianism and representative democracy. Worse, I at least sympathize with some of your arguments; my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty. For all those reasons, I’m not going to post on this particular thread in public for a few weeks. I will read and ponder one more public post on this thread by you, if any—I try to let opponents get in the last word whenever I move the previous question.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I described myself as a socialist 10 years ago when I was at university. My parents are lifelong Labour) voters. I have changed my political views over time which gives me some confidence that I am open minded in my fundamental political assumptions. Caveats are that my big 5 personality factors are correlated with libertarian politics (suggesting I may be biologically hardwired to think that way) and from some perspectives I could be seen as following the cliched route of moving to the right in my political views as I get older.
This is partly a stylistic thing—I feel that padding comments with disclaimers tends to detract from readability and distracts from the main point. I try to avoid saying things like in my opinion (should be obvious given I’m writing it) or variations on the theme of the balance of evidence leads me to conclude (where else would conclusions derive from) or making comments merely to remind readers that 0 and 1 are not probabilities (here of all places I hope that this goes without saying). I used to make heavy use of such caveats but I think they tend to increase verbiage without adding much information. If it helps, imagine that I’ve added all these disclaimers to anything I say as a footnote.
I tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
Incentives (or incentive structures, like markets [1]) are the result of human decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
[1] A market’s incentives aren’t set in detail, but permitting the market to operate in public or not is the result of a relatively small number of decisions.
Part of the thinking behind competitive government is that we are the people who set the incentives.
Seasteading is explicitly designed to create alternative social systems that operate somewhat outside the boundaries of existing states. An analogy is trying to introduce revolutionary technologies by convincing a democratic majority to vote for your idea vs. founding a startup and taking the ‘if you build it they will come’ route. The latter approach generally appears to have a better track record.
Charter cities were born out of a slightly different agenda but embody similar principles.
A simple step that individuals can take is to move to a jurisdiction in line with their values rather than trying to change their current jurisdiction through the political process. Competition works to improve products in ordinary markets because customers take their business to the companies that best satisfy their preferences. Migration is one of the few forces that applies some level of competitive pressure to governments.
Other potential approaches are to support secession or devolution movements, things like the free state project, supporting the sovereignty of tax havens, ‘starving the beast’ by structuring your affairs to minimize the amount of tax you pay, personal offshoring and other direct individual action that creates competitive pressure on jurisdictions.
I think he’s talking from a government perspective or a perspective of power.
Obviously, you can educate people yjat malaria is bad and beg people to solve the problem of malaria. It is, however, possible to know a lot about and not do anything about it.
Or you could pay people a lot of money if they would show work that might help the problem of malaria. I tend to think this method would be more effective, although there are other effective incentives than money.
Voted up. I think you should consider writing a top-level post summarizing some of the themes from Thousand Nations.
The common form “I don’t believe in X, but X would be bad if it did exist” seems to me like a bad sign; of what, I’m not sure, perhaps motivated cognition.
It can be a bad pattern but there are cases where it is legitimate, for example “I don’t believe in the Christian god but if he did exist he would appear to be a major asshole.”
It would either be polite or impolite to make explicit who the “some of the people” are that you refer to in this sentence, and what relevance this has to Mass_Driver’s remark. I am curious to hear which.
Mass_Driver appears to be one of the people who can be fooled all of the time since he judges politicians by what they say and how they present themselves rather than by what their actions say about their incentives and motivations. I did not intend to be ambiguous.
Thank you—I had suspected that might be your meaning, but I prefer not to pronounce negative judgments on people without clear cause, and I have read plenty of comments which appeared equally damning but were of an innocent nature upon elaboration. Carry on.
I appreciate the irony of your veiled criticism. Upvoted.
I appreciate your unusually deft grasp of the English language. Upvoted.
(I also appreciate the paucity of my education in the sociology of representative government, and must therefore bow out of the discussion. Please discount my opinion appropriately.)