This is a good topic for exploration, though I don’t have much belief that there’s any feasible implementation “at a societal level”. There are plenty of options at individual levels, mostly informal—commitments to friends and family, writing down plans and reviewing them later, etc.
In terms of theory, I don’t think we have a good model of individual identity that includes sub-agency and inconsistency over time. It’s not clear at all why we would, in principle, enforce the wishes of one part of someone onto another part.
This is a good topic for exploration, though I don’t have much belief that there’s any feasible implementation “at a societal level”.
Fair. I have instead the impression I see plenty of avenues. Bit embarrassingly: they are so far indeed not sufficiently structured in my head, require more detailed tinkering out, exploring failure modes and avenues for addressing in detail, plus they might, require significant restructuring of the relevant markets, and, worst, I have insufficient time to explore them in much detail quite now). But yes, it would remain to be shown & tested-out as mentioned in the post, and I hope I once can explore/write about it a bit more. For now my ambition is: Look, that is indeed a serious topic to explore; we should at least be aware of the possibility to upgrade people’s liberty by providing them ‘only’ alienable instead of inalienable rights to buy or consume. And start looking around as to what we might be able to do..
There are plenty of options at individual levels, mostly informal—commitments to friends and family, writing down plans and reviewing them later, etc.
An indicator of how good we are by using the “options at individual level” is how society looks; as explained, it doesn’t look good (though, as caveat-ed in the post, admittedly I cannot say how much of what seems to be addressable by commitment is indeed solely commitment failure; though there is imho plenty of indirect and anecdotal evidence suggesting it contributes a sizeable junk of it).
It’s not clear at all why we would, in principle, enforce the wishes of one part of someone onto another part.
“in principle” right, in practice I think it’s relatively simple. Nothing is really simple, but:
I think we could quite easily pull out of our hands (not meant as derogatory as it sounds) a bit of analytical theoreming to show under reasonably general conditions fitting some of the salient facts about our ‘short-term misbehavior’, the great benefits, say in medium- & and long-term aggregate utility or something, even when strongly discounted if you wish, of reigning in our short-term self. Discuss under what conditions the conclusion holds, then take away: without crazy assumptions, we often see benefits from supporting not short-termie. I actually think we might even find plenty of existing theory of commitment, discounting etc., doing just that or things close to doing just that.
I can personally not work on that in detail atm, though, and I think in practice the case appears so blatantly obvious when looking a ton of stylized facts (see post where I mention only few most obvious ones) in that domain that it’s worthwhile to start thinking about markets differently now, to start searching for solutions, while some shiny theoretical underpinning remain still pending.
Moreover, I think we societally already accept the case for that thing.
For example, I think paternalistic policies might have much a harder time to force or press us into, say, saving for later (or maybe also into not smoking by prohibitions or taxes etc.) if it wasn’t for many of us to silently agree that actually we’re happy for state to force us (or even the dear ones around us) to do something that actually part of us internally (that is of course long-termie) prefers while short-termie might just blow it instead.
In that paternalistic domain we currently indeed mainly rely on (i) external coercion and officially explain it as (ii) “state has to clean up if I get old, that’s why he forces me to save for pension”, but note how we already have some policies that may even more specifically be best be explained by implicitly acknowledging superiority of long-term self: While multiple compulsory pension schemes keep me save by covering my basic old age expenses, the state strongly incentivizes me to do voluntary pension contributions beyond what’s necessary to cover my basic living costs. If we wouldn’t, in practice, as a society, somehow agree with the idea that long-termie should have more of a say than he naturally has, I think it could be particularly difficult to get society to just stand by while I ‘evade’ taxes by using that scheme.[1]
That voluntary savings scheme incentivizes the saving-until-retirement by removing earnings & wealth taxes. It is on top of the compulsory schemes that are meant to cover basic living costs while at age (this has become a bit harder today but used to be, I think, simpler in the past when the voluntary policy also existed already).
This is a good topic for exploration, though I don’t have much belief that there’s any feasible implementation “at a societal level”. There are plenty of options at individual levels, mostly informal—commitments to friends and family, writing down plans and reviewing them later, etc.
In terms of theory, I don’t think we have a good model of individual identity that includes sub-agency and inconsistency over time. It’s not clear at all why we would, in principle, enforce the wishes of one part of someone onto another part.
Fair. I have instead the impression I see plenty of avenues. Bit embarrassingly: they are so far indeed not sufficiently structured in my head, require more detailed tinkering out, exploring failure modes and avenues for addressing in detail, plus they might, require significant restructuring of the relevant markets, and, worst, I have insufficient time to explore them in much detail quite now). But yes, it would remain to be shown & tested-out as mentioned in the post, and I hope I once can explore/write about it a bit more. For now my ambition is: Look, that is indeed a serious topic to explore; we should at least be aware of the possibility to upgrade people’s liberty by providing them ‘only’ alienable instead of inalienable rights to buy or consume. And start looking around as to what we might be able to do..
An indicator of how good we are by using the “options at individual level” is how society looks; as explained, it doesn’t look good (though, as caveat-ed in the post, admittedly I cannot say how much of what seems to be addressable by commitment is indeed solely commitment failure; though there is imho plenty of indirect and anecdotal evidence suggesting it contributes a sizeable junk of it).
“in principle” right, in practice I think it’s relatively simple. Nothing is really simple, but:
I think we could quite easily pull out of our hands (not meant as derogatory as it sounds) a bit of analytical theoreming to show under reasonably general conditions fitting some of the salient facts about our ‘short-term misbehavior’, the great benefits, say in medium- & and long-term aggregate utility or something, even when strongly discounted if you wish, of reigning in our short-term self. Discuss under what conditions the conclusion holds, then take away: without crazy assumptions, we often see benefits from supporting not short-termie. I actually think we might even find plenty of existing theory of commitment, discounting etc., doing just that or things close to doing just that.
I can personally not work on that in detail atm, though, and I think in practice the case appears so blatantly obvious when looking a ton of stylized facts (see post where I mention only few most obvious ones) in that domain that it’s worthwhile to start thinking about markets differently now, to start searching for solutions, while some shiny theoretical underpinning remain still pending.
Moreover, I think we societally already accept the case for that thing.
For example, I think paternalistic policies might have much a harder time to force or press us into, say, saving for later (or maybe also into not smoking by prohibitions or taxes etc.) if it wasn’t for many of us to silently agree that actually we’re happy for state to force us (or even the dear ones around us) to do something that actually part of us internally (that is of course long-termie) prefers while short-termie might just blow it instead.
In that paternalistic domain we currently indeed mainly rely on (i) external coercion and officially explain it as (ii) “state has to clean up if I get old, that’s why he forces me to save for pension”, but note how we already have some policies that may even more specifically be best be explained by implicitly acknowledging superiority of long-term self: While multiple compulsory pension schemes keep me save by covering my basic old age expenses, the state strongly incentivizes me to do voluntary pension contributions beyond what’s necessary to cover my basic living costs. If we wouldn’t, in practice, as a society, somehow agree with the idea that long-termie should have more of a say than he naturally has, I think it could be particularly difficult to get society to just stand by while I ‘evade’ taxes by using that scheme.[1]
That voluntary savings scheme incentivizes the saving-until-retirement by removing earnings & wealth taxes. It is on top of the compulsory schemes that are meant to cover basic living costs while at age (this has become a bit harder today but used to be, I think, simpler in the past when the voluntary policy also existed already).