So we’d have one “voter” funding single-payer healthcare and a bridge 2 miles up the river while another voter funded health-insurance subsidies for low-income and a bridge 1 mile down the river.
You would have “single issue funders,” someone who thought we weren’t spending enough on the environment would go 100% into environment.
You can’t find an aggregate advantage by simply summing up across the votes of people. Coming up with an even vaguely coherent plan or set of plans takes a lot of work. Without a process to do this and people to work on this, you will wind up with something even worse than a horse designed by a committee.
There must be some general term for the kind of fallacy behind pramatarianist thinking. Other examples are: 1) students should design their own curriculum to get a degree, 2) automobiles and smartphones should be designed by a focus group, actually even worse, by a focus group consisting of the entire population, 3) everybody working on a movie should vote on how the budget of that movie should be allocated between different scenes in order to produce a movie that EVERYONE will like.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with choosing your own curriculum, but you should not be able to get a degree labeled “physics BS” or “Math PhD” based on a curriculum you choose yourself.
If you think having everybody vote on what the parts of a car should look like will get you a better car, then it is reasonable to think pragmatarianism will get you a better budget. But, unfortunately, vice versa.
You’re critiquing the idea of creating a market in the public sector. What’s the difference between a market in the public sector and a market anywhere else? There’s a difference… but your comment sure doesn’t address it. Instead, you’re simply critiquing a market.
Every day you participate in a market. You have your preferences and you spend your hard-earned money accordingly. The supply follows from your demand, and my demand and everybody else’s demand.
Anything else is a non-sequitur. The supply either follows from our preferences… or it does not.
Right now the public sector reflects exactly what happens when the supply does not follow from our preferences. It’s a given that this is going to change in logically beneficial and highly predictable ways...
Variety? Skyrocket
Quality? Skyrocket
Cost? Plummet
The public sector is going to transform from monolithic to modular. Marginal improvements are going to be quickly made as inferior components are swapped for superior components. This is exactly what happens in markets.
You’re critiquing the idea of creating a market in the public sector. What’s the difference between a market in the public sector and a market anywhere else?
They did address many of the problems implicitly. One doesn’t for example in a real world situation have anyone try and pay exactly what they want for the version of the movie they want. Investors pay for a series of movies, then people either buy tickets or not. This aspect is solveable if one instead has pre-set programs one can allocate tax money to.
Note also that nothing in your system deals with the problem of public goods- people can benefit from something without paying for it and for many goods that’s a natural situation.
Here’s my explanation, just for you, why it’s not a problem that taxpayers could benefit from public goods that they hadn’t contributed to… Liberal Lilith’s Sexy Benefit Curves.
I don’t think this is a very effective way to have a dialogue with you repeatedly writing things up on your blog. It creates a trivial inconvenience for readers here. It also doesn’t help that your blog entries don’t link back to where the comments came from, which leads to a serious loss of context issue. If someone from elsewhere comes across your blog they will have a lot of trouble following. (Also I don’t think it helps in your blog that you insult people whose values you strongly disagree with.)
I’d respond to the content of the post, but I’m not sure there’s anything there which responses to the actual issue. The problem with free riding of public goods is not one of values, but one of incentives. Without economic incentives, many people won’t contribute to things that they benefit from even if they think they are good things.
I don’t do it all of the time… just when what I’ve written is too long and/or there’s a picture/diagram/video. The blog entry linked to this forum post. If anybody was truly interested in more specific context then it’s easy enough for them to ctl-f using relevant phrases.
I insulted people whose values I strongly disagree with? Sure, ok. But wouldn’t it be an infinitely bigger insult to them if I opposed their freedom to allocate their taxes according to their values? I’m sure there are people whose values you strongly disagree with. Do you support their freedom to allocate their taxes according to their values?
That’s too bad that you didn’t think that my blog entry adequately addressed your point about free-riding. Let me try again. Do you have Netflix? I do. I watch various shows and movies but I don’t value them all equally. But what if Netflix allowed me to allocate my monthly fees to the content that I valued most? After Netflix took its cut, they would pass the money on to the producers of the content that I dollar voted for.
Clearly there would be some content that I would consume that wouldn’t be worth my contribution. This is your concern. It’s not my concern though. Limited resources would constantly be shifted away from the creation of the least beneficial content and redirected towards the creation of the most beneficial content. This would maximize the amount of value that we, as a society, derived from our limited resources.
I don’t think Linus’s law applies here, since that’s with areas like programming where a) the eyeballs are experts and b) it is close unambiguous once a bug has been found that it is a bug.
When I tried to reply to it I was informed that “Replies to downvoted comments are discouraged. You don’t have the requisite 5 Karma points to proceed.”
It will probably help if you read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The only thing it will cost you is time! If the opportunity cost is too high then I suppose you can just take my word for it that you’re wrong.
Linus’s Law doesn’t just apply to finding errors/problems… it also applies to finding solutions… and treasure. The more kids looking for Easter eggs… the more Easter eggs that will be found. Given enough eyeballs, all Easter eggs are shallow.
Pragmatarianism would put a lot of eyeballs in the public sector. How could it not? Given enough eyeballs in the public sector, all problems/solutions will be shallow. If there’s a problem with public healthcare then pragmatarianism would increase our chances of finding it. Pragmatarianism would also increase our chances of finding a solution to this problem.
Perhaps it might seem like the opportunity cost of more people looking in the public sector is that we’ll have less people looking in the private sector. Because, nobody can look in two places at exactly the same time. Except, if people spend more time looking in the public sector then clearly it’s because they perceive that doing so increases their chances of finding and pointing out landmines/treasures.
In other words, we really don’t maximize progress by limiting where people can look… and act on whatever it is that they find. With this in mind, we would clearly maximize benefit by allowing people to give their taxes to any country’s government organizations. If Lilith gives her taxes to the Brazilian EPA rather than the American EPA then evidently she found a better Easter egg.
So we’d have one “voter” funding single-payer healthcare and a bridge 2 miles up the river while another voter funded health-insurance subsidies for low-income and a bridge 1 mile down the river.
You would have “single issue funders,” someone who thought we weren’t spending enough on the environment would go 100% into environment.
You can’t find an aggregate advantage by simply summing up across the votes of people. Coming up with an even vaguely coherent plan or set of plans takes a lot of work. Without a process to do this and people to work on this, you will wind up with something even worse than a horse designed by a committee.
There must be some general term for the kind of fallacy behind pramatarianist thinking. Other examples are: 1) students should design their own curriculum to get a degree, 2) automobiles and smartphones should be designed by a focus group, actually even worse, by a focus group consisting of the entire population, 3) everybody working on a movie should vote on how the budget of that movie should be allocated between different scenes in order to produce a movie that EVERYONE will like.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with choosing your own curriculum, but you should not be able to get a degree labeled “physics BS” or “Math PhD” based on a curriculum you choose yourself.
If you think having everybody vote on what the parts of a car should look like will get you a better car, then it is reasonable to think pragmatarianism will get you a better budget. But, unfortunately, vice versa.
You’re critiquing the idea of creating a market in the public sector. What’s the difference between a market in the public sector and a market anywhere else? There’s a difference… but your comment sure doesn’t address it. Instead, you’re simply critiquing a market.
Every day you participate in a market. You have your preferences and you spend your hard-earned money accordingly. The supply follows from your demand, and my demand and everybody else’s demand.
Anything else is a non-sequitur. The supply either follows from our preferences… or it does not.
Right now the public sector reflects exactly what happens when the supply does not follow from our preferences. It’s a given that this is going to change in logically beneficial and highly predictable ways...
Variety? Skyrocket
Quality? Skyrocket
Cost? Plummet
The public sector is going to transform from monolithic to modular. Marginal improvements are going to be quickly made as inferior components are swapped for superior components. This is exactly what happens in markets.
They did address many of the problems implicitly. One doesn’t for example in a real world situation have anyone try and pay exactly what they want for the version of the movie they want. Investors pay for a series of movies, then people either buy tickets or not. This aspect is solveable if one instead has pre-set programs one can allocate tax money to.
Note also that nothing in your system deals with the problem of public goods- people can benefit from something without paying for it and for many goods that’s a natural situation.
Here’s my explanation, just for you, why it’s not a problem that taxpayers could benefit from public goods that they hadn’t contributed to… Liberal Lilith’s Sexy Benefit Curves.
I don’t think this is a very effective way to have a dialogue with you repeatedly writing things up on your blog. It creates a trivial inconvenience for readers here. It also doesn’t help that your blog entries don’t link back to where the comments came from, which leads to a serious loss of context issue. If someone from elsewhere comes across your blog they will have a lot of trouble following. (Also I don’t think it helps in your blog that you insult people whose values you strongly disagree with.)
I’d respond to the content of the post, but I’m not sure there’s anything there which responses to the actual issue. The problem with free riding of public goods is not one of values, but one of incentives. Without economic incentives, many people won’t contribute to things that they benefit from even if they think they are good things.
I don’t do it all of the time… just when what I’ve written is too long and/or there’s a picture/diagram/video. The blog entry linked to this forum post. If anybody was truly interested in more specific context then it’s easy enough for them to ctl-f using relevant phrases.
I insulted people whose values I strongly disagree with? Sure, ok. But wouldn’t it be an infinitely bigger insult to them if I opposed their freedom to allocate their taxes according to their values? I’m sure there are people whose values you strongly disagree with. Do you support their freedom to allocate their taxes according to their values?
That’s too bad that you didn’t think that my blog entry adequately addressed your point about free-riding. Let me try again. Do you have Netflix? I do. I watch various shows and movies but I don’t value them all equally. But what if Netflix allowed me to allocate my monthly fees to the content that I valued most? After Netflix took its cut, they would pass the money on to the producers of the content that I dollar voted for.
Clearly there would be some content that I would consume that wouldn’t be worth my contribution. This is your concern. It’s not my concern though. Limited resources would constantly be shifted away from the creation of the least beneficial content and redirected towards the creation of the most beneficial content. This would maximize the amount of value that we, as a society, derived from our limited resources.
For more elaboration… Crazy Cable Confusion: Costless Content Creation
Elsewhere you wrote...
When I tried to reply to it I was informed that “Replies to downvoted comments are discouraged. You don’t have the requisite 5 Karma points to proceed.”
It will probably help if you read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The only thing it will cost you is time! If the opportunity cost is too high then I suppose you can just take my word for it that you’re wrong.
Linus’s Law doesn’t just apply to finding errors/problems… it also applies to finding solutions… and treasure. The more kids looking for Easter eggs… the more Easter eggs that will be found. Given enough eyeballs, all Easter eggs are shallow.
Pragmatarianism would put a lot of eyeballs in the public sector. How could it not? Given enough eyeballs in the public sector, all problems/solutions will be shallow. If there’s a problem with public healthcare then pragmatarianism would increase our chances of finding it. Pragmatarianism would also increase our chances of finding a solution to this problem.
Perhaps it might seem like the opportunity cost of more people looking in the public sector is that we’ll have less people looking in the private sector. Because, nobody can look in two places at exactly the same time. Except, if people spend more time looking in the public sector then clearly it’s because they perceive that doing so increases their chances of finding and pointing out landmines/treasures.
In other words, we really don’t maximize progress by limiting where people can look… and act on whatever it is that they find. With this in mind, we would clearly maximize benefit by allowing people to give their taxes to any country’s government organizations. If Lilith gives her taxes to the Brazilian EPA rather than the American EPA then evidently she found a better Easter egg.
What you are describing is not a market.