If you have the right to make noise and someone else wants to pay you to be quiet, you might pretend to like noise more than you do to get them to pay you more. But if you have the right to keep things quiet and someone else wants to pay you so they can make noise, you might pretend to like quiet more than you do to get them to pay you more. The fact that people can pretend to want things more than they do makes deals harder regardless of which is the efficient outcome.
The problem isn’t that people might pretend to like noise. Their liking of noise is irrelevant. The problem is that
a) Annoying people is a path to wealth, and
b) Even paying them off doesn’t make the problem go away, but draws in more people to try the same trick.
The motorcycle revver could actually hate noise, but simply love extortion payments drawn from the wealth that society has—or at least, has until people like him become too common and too tolerated.
It’s all about incentives. Rewarding people for threatening to do, but refraining from, some action, will lead to people capable of threatening convincingly making a great deal of wealth, up to some equilibrium point where either the action is sufficiently tolerated by society or the people who don’t like the action have become sufficiently poor that the public threats to do it are no longer rewarding enough.
If there’s no public regulation of noise, and I feel like being noisy, why would I offer to pay a quiet-liker? I’ll just be noisy and stop if someone pays me to. The situation isn’t symmetric, because the quiet-liker wants the noise-maker to change their default behavior, but the noise-maker doesn’t care about the quiet-liker’s default behavior.
Regulation is different from property rights. People could have a property right to make noise, or to prevent noise, or there could be regulation to set a given level of noise or quiet.
If you have the right to make noise and someone else wants to pay you to be quiet, you might pretend to like noise more than you do to get them to pay you more. But if you have the right to keep things quiet and someone else wants to pay you so they can make noise, you might pretend to like quiet more than you do to get them to pay you more. The fact that people can pretend to want things more than they do makes deals harder regardless of which is the efficient outcome.
The problem isn’t that people might pretend to like noise. Their liking of noise is irrelevant. The problem is that
a) Annoying people is a path to wealth, and b) Even paying them off doesn’t make the problem go away, but draws in more people to try the same trick.
The motorcycle revver could actually hate noise, but simply love extortion payments drawn from the wealth that society has—or at least, has until people like him become too common and too tolerated.
It’s all about incentives. Rewarding people for threatening to do, but refraining from, some action, will lead to people capable of threatening convincingly making a great deal of wealth, up to some equilibrium point where either the action is sufficiently tolerated by society or the people who don’t like the action have become sufficiently poor that the public threats to do it are no longer rewarding enough.
Yes, exactly right, but … did you mean that as a reply to RobinHanson?
Er, perhaps. I was generalizing a bit from what you said, so I wanted the context of your post. It was more directed at uninvolved readers, I think.
But I haven’t had much coffee yet today so I’m not sure.
Oh, okay. That works too. You have enough coffee; I’m just too combative today ;-)
If there’s no public regulation of noise, and I feel like being noisy, why would I offer to pay a quiet-liker? I’ll just be noisy and stop if someone pays me to. The situation isn’t symmetric, because the quiet-liker wants the noise-maker to change their default behavior, but the noise-maker doesn’t care about the quiet-liker’s default behavior.
Regulation is different from property rights. People could have a property right to make noise, or to prevent noise, or there could be regulation to set a given level of noise or quiet.