Disqus - Latest Comments for James

Re: Crest, Colgate, Autonomy, Alienation, Not Voting, Etc.

James — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:52:26 -0000

Will, most people think that there are two ways to make an "authentic" choice, free of false-consciousness:

- By choosing what is in your authentic interest
- By knowingly choosing to do something that will promote others' authentic interests

Now, if you're fairly well off, living a fairly comfortable life, then it's probably true that your life is largely unaffected by which party is in power. But a lot of people's lives are affected. For millions of people, which party has power could mean the difference between having health care or not, or between making just enough money to get by or making a little bit more, or between having the right to get married or not. For over a hundred thousand people, it has meant going overseas to fight a war in Iraq, for thousands of those it has meant serious injury, and for hundreds of them, death. It could make a difference in the rights, liberties, and prosperity of millions of people in the Middle East. I could go on.

Some people sincerely care about issues like these and vote based on what they value and what they believe the parties will do, even though these issues only have a minor, tangential effect on their self-interest. Others are tricked by rhetoric & advertising. And there's a continuum between the two.

Politics may be more sensitive to false-consciousness-inducing salesmanship than commerce because the effects of politics are less clear and tangible. You can feel whether your shoes are comfortable, but it's hard to tell whether Iraq really is becoming a democracy, or what Saddam would have done if we hadn't taken him out, or what impact the changes in Iraq will have on the safety of the US.

Re: Crest, Colgate, Autonomy, Alienation, Not Voting, Etc.

James — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 20:14:42 -0000

Will,

I believe that Dems are more likely to do things like increasing the EITC and minimum wage, making the tax system more progressive, and creating policies that decrease the number of people without healthcare. I think that both history and the current proposals of the parties support my position (on the whole).

I also firmly believe that Kerry (or Gore) would not have declared war on Iraq had he been President. Certainly, the position that Kerry took on the war as a Senator is open to criticism, but I find it hard to believe that he would have chosen to fight that war if he were setting the agenda instead of just voting yes or no on it.

I don't think that a Kerry presidency will whiten my teeth or help me sleep, but I think that it will have a significant benefit for the American populace (and many people outside America), especially compared with another Bush term.

Re: Too Rich for Our Own Good

James — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 20:33:37 -0000

Your principle of behavioral uniformity sounds like one of the most depressing principles ever. People suffer from their irrationality and there's nothing anyone can do to improve their condition because they're all irrational people too.

Actual psychology research looks at the possibility of fixing or getting around people's biases. People are bad with probabilities, but if you teach them to use frequencies instead then they become less bad. Students tend to do worse work because they procrastinate, but they can improve their work if they set binding deadlines for themselves. Doctors show the same bias as everyone else at attending to sunk costs, except when asked about questions relating to medicine, in which case they tend to respond rationally. So people can act more rationally by learning how to think with less bias, by making "meta-decisions" to put themselves in a situation where their bias will be less harmful, or simply by gaining expertise in the relevant subject matter.

Thus, the forms of bias particular to government do not unfailingly mirror the biases in the population that could potentially make government action useful. It's at least conceivable that the government could actually function rationally enough for it to create policies that compensate for people's irrationality and improve their welfare.

So, why isn't Barry Schwartz writing about the question of whether policy-makers will know enough about the psychology of well-being and act rationally enough to make good policy? Maybe it's because his expertise is in psychology, not politics. Maybe it's because he doesn't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy about the un-implementability of the improvements to government policy that he is advocating. Or maybe he's just too busy explaining the latest developments in the psychology of well-being to the British government.

Re: If desert works, then why?

James — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 09:54:46 -0000

...treating people as if they deserve things promotes utility because the practice aligns itself with their moral self-conception...

I agree that this is one of the reasons why desert promotes utility, but it gets us into a chicken & egg thing. Why do people believe that they do deserve things? Probably (at least in part) because people are treated as if they deserve things.

Re: Misbehavioral Economics

James — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:09:45 -0000

I think he falls victim to a number of confusions common among behavioral economists that are inevitable when you completely destroy the formal neoclassical economic model of rationality but insist on using it as a benchmark of rationality anyway.

It's fairly common in the judgment & decision making area to make a distinction between descriptive (how people actually behave), normative (the ideal behavior for a being without limitations), and prescriptive (the best that people can do given our inherent limitations). You seem to be suggesting that the prescriptive is relatively close to the descriptive, with the prescriptive-normative gap almost as large as the descriptive-normative gap. If you're interested, a book that covers this area pretty well is Stanovich's Who Is Rational. He does a good job of laying out the main arguments over whether the prescriptive is closer to the descriptive (meaning that we're doing about as well as we can) or the normative (meaning that we don't do nearly as well as what we're capable of). He also brings in his own arguments based on his research of individual differences.

Re: Americans Hate Redistribution

James — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:04:35 -0000

"Americans love jobs and improving economic conditions" would be a more accurate (though less sexy) post title. Wealth redistribution couldn't top that in a head-to-head forced choice, but I doubt that other relatively narrow economic agendas (like something related to taxes or trade, from either side of the issue) would poll much better if you pitted it against a good economy with good jobs. And it's not like policymakers actually have to choose between the two alternatives.

Re: Christina Romer’s Six Lessons

James — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:04:50 -0000

Based on the CBO numbers, the stimulus amounts to 2.1% of GDP over the rest of FY 2009 (stimulus is $185B over the 225 days from its mid-February signing through 9/30/09, while GDP for that period is about 225/365 x $14.3T = $8.8T). Then it's 2.8% of GDP in FY 2010, 0.9% of GDP in FY 2011, and 0.5% of one year's GDP over the rest of the 10-year projection. So there goes Frum's criticism based on Lesson One. Maybe bigger would've been better, but the stimulus gets close to its maximum rate quickly and is concentrated over its first 20 months.

I don't know enough about Lesson Two (monetary policy) to comment, and there's nothing to Lesson Six (a bad economy is bad). That leaves Lessons Three through Five, which all depend on predictions about future policy. We'll see over the coming months what the Obama administration does on fixing the financial system (#4) and trade (#5 - though I'm not even sure if that's what Romer was referring to), and over the coming years whether they cut back on the stimulus too soon (#3). Frum doesn't like what he sees in his crystal ball, but who knows what Romer thinks, what Obama is planning, or what's actually going to happen.