While I agree that the state can not prevent you from becoming obese or drunk (mush less sure about, say, heroine), I think it is legitimate to apply economic incentives to decrease the expected number of people engaging in a given activity.
Many states apply taxes on tobacco and sugar, and there are advertising and sale restrictions on cigarettes and alcohol.
If you (= the government) tax something, then you (i.e., the government) have little incentive to decrease it, but the people doing it have a clear financial incentive to decrease it.
So a government that puts a big tax on whatever-it-is gives up its own ability (or at least motivation) to decrease the thing directly, while giving the people who actually do it an incentive to do so. It’s reasonable, at least in some cases, to hope that those people are better placed to decrease the thing than the government is.
First of all, this isn’t only about literal drug addictions; other examples mentioned in the subthread are eating too much sugar (which surely has some addiction-like qualities but I wouldn’t bet heavily that it works just the same way) and advertising (where the people who might be deterred by taxation are the advertisers, whose relationship to advertising is surely not one of addiction). Even for drug addiction, the relevant taxes might reduce profits for the sellers who are generally not addicted, whether or not they affect the behaviour of the buyers.
Second, I dispute that we “know” that increasing incentives not to take some addictive drug consistently does nothing to reduce addictive-drug-taking. Maybe I’m just not aware of some relevant evidence; would you like to give me a pointer to, say, the two things that you think are the strongest evidence for that proposition? (As opposed to weaker ones like “sometimes if you deter people from using one drug they switch to another”, which I’m sure is true.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I entirely agree that governments should be trying much harder to reduce the harm done by drug addiction and trying much less hard to punish people for getting addicted to drugs. I’m just not at all convinced by one specific argument you made, namely that taxing “lotuses” can’t reduce how much they’re used because it decreases the government’s incentive to do it.
Yes, “lotus” is broader than “addictive intoxicating drug” (though I’m not sure it’s specifically about “utility to society or state”; it might be utility to oneself-thinking-longer-term, for instance). That was exactly my point: you are trying to generalize from something allegedly true of literal drug addiction (that if an addict’s drug of preference becomes unavailable or much harder to get, they will switch to another drug rather than stopping being addicted) to all lotuses, even ones that might be quite different from drugs.
Disincentives are incentives. If I know that I’ll get punched in the face if I do X, that is an incentive to do something other than X instead. If I know that I’ll get punched in the face if I don’t do X, that is an incentive to do X.
You may be right that positive incentives are more effective than negative ones, and it’s absolutely reasonable to want to reduce the negative incentives imposed by governments. I’ve no problem with any of that. But you made stronger claims than those, and those are what I disagreed with.
If the government decides that something I enjoy[1] should be taxed into oblivion, then I’ll probably do it much less or not at all. I may well do more of something else I enjoy[1] to compensate. If that’s something the government is happier for me to do, then they may be pleased with the outcome. I don’t think anyone is claiming that carefully chosen taxes will turn people into idealized productivity machines.
(How certain is it that if denied one lotus I’ll switch to another lotus? Not very, I think. The nearest available substitute for a newly-unvailable lotus may be less lotus-y.)
[1] Or “desire”, which of course isn’t the same thing.
Incentives are not only about operant conditioning, and what matters is whether a given measure is successful in changing people’s behaviour, not whether it’s successful specifically by means of operant conditioning.
I don’t think “incentive” is a standard term in behaviourist psychology at all, but unless I’m very confused—which is always possible—operant conditioning absolutely does include responses to the presence or absence of unpleasant stimuli, and also to the absence of a pleasant one that would otherwise have been present. If you’re claiming that disincentives can’t be effective in changing behaviour, I think you need to provide some actual evidence for that.
I wasn’t attempting to put up an “academic fence”, I was responded to what seemed like your attempt at doing exactly that. I’ve no objection to the terms “incentive” and “disincentive”. Perhaps I misunderstood your intention.
Anyway, it seems to me that the claims you’re making have got weaker and weaker, to the point at which they don’t offer any real argument against (e.g.) taxes on things the government wants people to do less of.
You started off by claiming that doing this would be counterproductive because the government’s incentives would be wrong. “Anything you tax you have little incentive to decrease.”
I pointed out that that could be counterbalanced by the fact that taxing things give the people actually doing them an incentive to do them less. You then shifted to claiming that specifically for addictive drugs making one drug less available just makes people switch to another.
I pointed out that we aren’t talking only about addictive drugs, and questioned whether there’s good evidence that the substitution effect you describe is strong and consistent enough to justify the claim that there’s no point trying to dissuade people from taking a drug because they’ll necessarily switch to another that’s just as bad. You ignored my request for evidence, and switched to arguing that taxes give disincentives which are completely different from incentives.
I pointed out that disincentives are one variety of incentives. You then switched to saying that they’re completely different from the perspective of operant conditioning.
I pointed out that human motivation isn’t just operant conditioning and that operant conditioning works with disincentives as well as incentives. You switched to claiming that operant conditioning is “the gold standard”, whatever exactly that means, and that positive stimuli work better than negative stimuli in operant conditioning.
By this point, what you’re saying has very little to do with the original question. We shouldn’t tax lotus-like things … because operant conditioning is (in some unspecified and unevidenced sense) the best way to modify behaviour and it works better with positive than negative stimuli? That doesn’t seem very convincing.
Again, I’m not arguing that the government should (always, or often, or in any particular case, or ever) tax lotus-like things. Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe not. But I hope that whoever’s making that decision is going to base it on something other than what sort of stimuli are most effective for training pigeons.
I am not really into the studies, but I know that in 1950/1960 virtually everyone smoked (also, if you read books from that period, is it taken as given that everyone smokes), while now it is quite uncommon for a young person in Italy to smoke.
I think that also in the USA tobacco consumption rate is plummeting, so why are you saying that it does not work?
It may be misleading to conflate all “addictions” together. I can see how this can not work with heroine, but addiction to candies is a different thing.
While I agree that the state can not prevent you from becoming obese or drunk (mush less sure about, say, heroine), I think it is legitimate to apply economic incentives to decrease the expected number of people engaging in a given activity.
Many states apply taxes on tobacco and sugar, and there are advertising and sale restrictions on cigarettes and alcohol.
-
If you (= the government) tax something, then you (i.e., the government) have little incentive to decrease it, but the people doing it have a clear financial incentive to decrease it.
So a government that puts a big tax on whatever-it-is gives up its own ability (or at least motivation) to decrease the thing directly, while giving the people who actually do it an incentive to do so. It’s reasonable, at least in some cases, to hope that those people are better placed to decrease the thing than the government is.
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First of all, this isn’t only about literal drug addictions; other examples mentioned in the subthread are eating too much sugar (which surely has some addiction-like qualities but I wouldn’t bet heavily that it works just the same way) and advertising (where the people who might be deterred by taxation are the advertisers, whose relationship to advertising is surely not one of addiction). Even for drug addiction, the relevant taxes might reduce profits for the sellers who are generally not addicted, whether or not they affect the behaviour of the buyers.
Second, I dispute that we “know” that increasing incentives not to take some addictive drug consistently does nothing to reduce addictive-drug-taking. Maybe I’m just not aware of some relevant evidence; would you like to give me a pointer to, say, the two things that you think are the strongest evidence for that proposition? (As opposed to weaker ones like “sometimes if you deter people from using one drug they switch to another”, which I’m sure is true.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I entirely agree that governments should be trying much harder to reduce the harm done by drug addiction and trying much less hard to punish people for getting addicted to drugs. I’m just not at all convinced by one specific argument you made, namely that taxing “lotuses” can’t reduce how much they’re used because it decreases the government’s incentive to do it.
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Yes, “lotus” is broader than “addictive intoxicating drug” (though I’m not sure it’s specifically about “utility to society or state”; it might be utility to oneself-thinking-longer-term, for instance). That was exactly my point: you are trying to generalize from something allegedly true of literal drug addiction (that if an addict’s drug of preference becomes unavailable or much harder to get, they will switch to another drug rather than stopping being addicted) to all lotuses, even ones that might be quite different from drugs.
Disincentives are incentives. If I know that I’ll get punched in the face if I do X, that is an incentive to do something other than X instead. If I know that I’ll get punched in the face if I don’t do X, that is an incentive to do X.
You may be right that positive incentives are more effective than negative ones, and it’s absolutely reasonable to want to reduce the negative incentives imposed by governments. I’ve no problem with any of that. But you made stronger claims than those, and those are what I disagreed with.
If the government decides that something I enjoy[1] should be taxed into oblivion, then I’ll probably do it much less or not at all. I may well do more of something else I enjoy[1] to compensate. If that’s something the government is happier for me to do, then they may be pleased with the outcome. I don’t think anyone is claiming that carefully chosen taxes will turn people into idealized productivity machines.
(How certain is it that if denied one lotus I’ll switch to another lotus? Not very, I think. The nearest available substitute for a newly-unvailable lotus may be less lotus-y.)
[1] Or “desire”, which of course isn’t the same thing.
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Incentives are not only about operant conditioning, and what matters is whether a given measure is successful in changing people’s behaviour, not whether it’s successful specifically by means of operant conditioning.
I don’t think “incentive” is a standard term in behaviourist psychology at all, but unless I’m very confused—which is always possible—operant conditioning absolutely does include responses to the presence or absence of unpleasant stimuli, and also to the absence of a pleasant one that would otherwise have been present. If you’re claiming that disincentives can’t be effective in changing behaviour, I think you need to provide some actual evidence for that.
-
I wasn’t attempting to put up an “academic fence”, I was responded to what seemed like your attempt at doing exactly that. I’ve no objection to the terms “incentive” and “disincentive”. Perhaps I misunderstood your intention.
Anyway, it seems to me that the claims you’re making have got weaker and weaker, to the point at which they don’t offer any real argument against (e.g.) taxes on things the government wants people to do less of.
You started off by claiming that doing this would be counterproductive because the government’s incentives would be wrong. “Anything you tax you have little incentive to decrease.”
I pointed out that that could be counterbalanced by the fact that taxing things give the people actually doing them an incentive to do them less. You then shifted to claiming that specifically for addictive drugs making one drug less available just makes people switch to another.
I pointed out that we aren’t talking only about addictive drugs, and questioned whether there’s good evidence that the substitution effect you describe is strong and consistent enough to justify the claim that there’s no point trying to dissuade people from taking a drug because they’ll necessarily switch to another that’s just as bad. You ignored my request for evidence, and switched to arguing that taxes give disincentives which are completely different from incentives.
I pointed out that disincentives are one variety of incentives. You then switched to saying that they’re completely different from the perspective of operant conditioning.
I pointed out that human motivation isn’t just operant conditioning and that operant conditioning works with disincentives as well as incentives. You switched to claiming that operant conditioning is “the gold standard”, whatever exactly that means, and that positive stimuli work better than negative stimuli in operant conditioning.
By this point, what you’re saying has very little to do with the original question. We shouldn’t tax lotus-like things … because operant conditioning is (in some unspecified and unevidenced sense) the best way to modify behaviour and it works better with positive than negative stimuli? That doesn’t seem very convincing.
Again, I’m not arguing that the government should (always, or often, or in any particular case, or ever) tax lotus-like things. Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe not. But I hope that whoever’s making that decision is going to base it on something other than what sort of stimuli are most effective for training pigeons.
I am not really into the studies, but I know that in 1950/1960 virtually everyone smoked (also, if you read books from that period, is it taken as given that everyone smokes), while now it is quite uncommon for a young person in Italy to smoke.
I think that also in the USA tobacco consumption rate is plummeting, so why are you saying that it does not work?
It may be misleading to conflate all “addictions” together. I can see how this can not work with heroine, but addiction to candies is a different thing.