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Coasianism

Deuce said:
No, communism sucks because it eliminates many incentives to work hard or excel.
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Sure, incentives matter.... but the incentive to do what? In other words... what about economic calculation?

Deuce said:
You are mistaken in your belief that our public sector cannot judge intensity of preference.
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In an earlier post I asked you to provide solid evidence and/or credible support that the stated preference technique is accurate and reliable. You completely ignored my request. Yet, here you are making the same assertion. I wouldn't argue that we should replace voting with spending if there was substantial evidence that voting was an accurate way to reveal people's preferences. So please provide some credible support for your claim that the public sector knows how much I, or anybody else, cares about any public good.

It's super easy to provide this evidence. Just e-mail your representative and have them tell you what the intensities of your preferences for public goods are. Then share their reply with the rest of us.
 
Xerographica said:
Sure, incentives matter.... but the incentive to do what? In other words... what about economic calculation?
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This question could have been answered by reading the rest of the sentence.

In an earlier post I asked you to provide solid evidence and/or credible support that the stated preference technique is accurate and reliable. You completely ignored my request. Yet, here you are making the same assertion. I wouldn't argue that we should replace voting with spending if there was substantial evidence that voting was an accurate way to reveal people's preferences. So please provide some credible support for your claim that the public sector knows how much I, or anybody else, cares about any public good.
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Polling, surveys, letters to congress, lobbying. It's called the first amendment. People can express their opinions, and do. I mean, look at this forum. The entire purpose of this forum is for people to express opinion about political systems and legislative activity. There are literally millions of polls out there on a wide range of subjects, and often rank things in terms of "very important, somewhat important," or "strongly agree, somewhat agree."

Are you saying it's all inaccurate and unreliable? A poll on support for same-sex marriage doesn't accurately reflect peoples' opinions on same-sex marriage?


I mean seriously: you're arguing that elected officials have no idea what their constituents want. If that's the case, how did they get elected? How do they get re-elected?


It's super easy to provide this evidence. Just e-mail your representative and have them tell you what the intensities of your preferences for public goods are. Then share their reply with the rest of us.
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How about I email my representative and tell them the intensity of my preference?

But you know what? Let's say it's all wrong. All of the polls, all of the surveys, the entire industry of opinion-taking is inaccurate and unreliable. This is your argument, let's assume it's true:

Does coasianism improve this information?

The answer is no, and I've shown you mathematically why. Using your own example, Bill Gates cared for 4 seconds worth of income enough to vote for a law, while I cared for an hour's worth of income to vote against it. Yet, coasianism assumes Bill Gates' preference was greater.

Meanwhile, an opinion poll asks us both. I say "strongly oppose," Bill Gates says "somewhat approve." This has accurately collected information regarding the intensity of our preference. Where coasianism failed to do that. Point out as many problems as you like about the current system, but none of that matters if your solution isn't actually a solution.
 
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Deuce said:
Meanwhile, an opinion poll asks us both. I say "strongly oppose," Bill Gates says "somewhat approve." This has accurately collected information regarding the intensity of our preference.
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Please substantiate that your claim is true. I'll substantiate my claim that your claim is false...

Economists have attempted to assign economic values (based on the principle of substitutability at the margin) to noncommodity items by methods such as shadow pricing and contingent valuation surveys. These methods are plagued with problems of accuracy and legitimacy. - Paul M. Wood, Biodiversity and Democracy
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Nevertheless, the classic solution to the problem of underprovision of public goods has been government funding - through compulsory taxation - and government production of the good or service in question. Although this may substantially alleviate the problem of numerous free-riders that refuse to pay for the benefits they receive, it should be noted that the policy process does not provide any very plausible method for determining what the optimal or best level of provision of a public good actually is. When it is impossible to observe what individuals are willing to give up in order to get the public good, how can policymakers access how urgently they really want more or less of it, given the other possible uses of their money? There is a whole economic literature dealing with the willingness-to-pay methods and contingent valuation techniques to try and divine such preference in the absence of a market price doing so, but even the most optimistic proponents of such devices tend to concede that public goods will still most likely be underprovided or overprovided under government stewardship. - Patricia Kennett, Governance, globalization and public policy
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Now it's your turn. Please substantiate that your claim is true.
 
Xerographica said:
Please substantiate that your claim is true. I'll substantiate my claim that your claim is false...
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I did already. With math.

Remember, the four seconds vs. one hour vs. one month talk?
 
Xerographica said:
The outcome of voting is never mutually beneficial. But if we replaced voting with spending (coasianism), then the outcome would be mutually beneficial.

In this story on Medium... here's how I inappropriately summed up coasianism...

If I was stranded on a deserted island with some animal liberation chick… and she was like, “I’ll have sex with you if you stop eating rats and fish”… then it’s entirely possible that I might consider it to be a good deal.
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Well...maybe you could start by not calling women 'chicks'?
 
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