Disqus - Latest Comments for ryan yin

Re: New on Free Will: Polluting the Polls with Jason Brennan

ryan yin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:41:31 -0000

What about a test of general political knowledge (how many years to a Senator's term?, etc.) or even a vocabulary test (on grounds that smarter voters are more likely to be better voters)? If one agrees with arguments like Brennan's, it doesn't seem one would have to try very hard to generate a test that is more accurate than the status quo, right? After all, we're really just looking for something that works better in the aggregate.

Re: Some Nuance on “Bad Voters”

ryan yin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:38:19 -0000

Tiberius,
Wouldn't one think that the practice isn't the act of voting itself, but something like, for example, reading newspapers or discussing politics or general education or something along those lines?

Re: Some Nuance on “Bad Voters”

ryan yin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:37:53 -0000

I had thought that the empirics were that education and performance on basic political tests don't have much of a predictive power (at least in a linear fashion) with political party, though they do have a lot of predictive power, just orthogonal to the right-left dimension. That is, adding extra education or political information changes preferences, but not systematically in favor of one party. Which seems to be entirely in keeping with what Brennan is saying (though not in keeping with some of the less sympathetic readings of what Brennan or Wilkinson are saying), unless I'm misinterpreting.

Re: The Wealth Will Be Spread, Joe

ryan yin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:51:23 -0000

Daniel,
I'm a bit confused as to what the public good is here. I can see how if the state owns something and provides it to residents (or sells it and gives residents the money), that might fit (more or less) the technical definition of "public good". But to me, it seems like "public good" is a useful concept only when we're talking about goods where it's inherently difficult to exclude (as opposed to where they just happen not to exclude). It seems like the point of the concept is to point to places where it's hard for the market to exist and so state action is required; talking about places where the state's action per se causes the market absence seems to obscure the issue.

Am I just misunderstanding?

Re: Let’s Measure Meaning!

ryan yin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:33:36 -0000

"There is certainly more than one way of winning an argument, but there's just one way of knowing: the empirical way. "

Has this ever been proven empirically?

More seriously, I just wonder what really was wrong with old-fashioned revealed preference? Sure, there are uncountably many utility functions that correspond to any set of preferences, making interpersonal comparisons deeply problematic (not that that stops anyone), but maybe that just tells us something about what we should expect from happiness research.

Re: Spread My Wealth!

ryan yin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:29:12 -0000

Will,
You seem generally willing to take seriously the point that your vote is ridiculously unlikely to matter, so why is this so shocking? With the exception of P-Diddy, I don't think many voters who make more than $100K really and truly believe that they're swinging the election.

Re: Spread My Wealth!

ryan yin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:20:06 -0000

publiusendures,
Happiness studies also say that, after 6 months or so, becoming a quadriplegic has no affect on happiness. Does this demonstrate: (a) people don't care about being quadriplegics, (b) that what people want can't be collapsed to "happiness" or (c) happiness literatures is just junk that comes from taking utility theory waaaaay too seriously [except for the part about how a utility function is only unique up to a monotonic transformation]?

Re: Spread My Wealth!

ryan yin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:44:15 -0000

publiusendures,
I see the point, and I think it's reasonable (though I don't think I agree). I'm just saying that the happiness literature doesn't make your point more convincing, and also that the claim "happiness ... highest priority for most people" is provably false (at least if you define "happiness" to mean whatever it is those studies measure).

Regarding priorities, is it in fact the case that high income people do want lower/less progressive taxes? If they simply have other priorities that trump what they actually want on economic issues, then this should show up in public opinion polls. Does it?

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

ryan yin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:15:25 -0000

Good point Freddie. But actually, since I'm already wishing, I'm just going to skip to wishing that there's a way that health care can be magically free. Or that the value of benefits to workers can exceed the value of the money it would take to pay for said benefits.

Re: The More Specific Lesson of Rod Blagojevich

ryan yin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:36:09 -0000

I don't want to be written off here as a crazy libertarian who is defecting in a cooperation game. But why couldn't all of the same logic be applied to appointing judges, or Supreme Court justices, or presidential cabinets? In fact, just consider this paragraph: Even absent corrupt motives, that role asks too much of any governor. No one can accurately represent the wishes of the people of the state, and no one should try. One could say the same thing not just about appointments, but about representative democracy in general. It seems like Chapman is expressing a tautology more than an argument: making decisions in a less democratic way is less democratic. Okay, fine: and so? Clearly no one would say that limitations on democracy are always bad and only justified when the alternative is cost-prohibitive: that would seem to rule out most of the constitution. I would say that I think judges should be appointed rather than elected, and not for primarily cost reasons -- it's because I think electing judges leads to worse judges.

Re: The More Specific Lesson of Rod Blagojevich

ryan yin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:58:37 -0000

Which theory, though? They weren't directly elected originally, so clearly not the original theory. You could say the theory of the people amending the constitution, but I'm not sure they had a theory in general, or if they did that it didn't amount to saying "increasing democracy is an end in itself."

Are there really a lot of discussions about the degree of democracy that are speaking directly about the effect on the quality of policy? Always sounds like people talking wishing to better express the 'will of the people' to me.

Re: Check Out the Graphs on Andrew Gelman

ryan yin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:19:47 -0000

I really should check myself rather than asking (I would plead busy morning, but then why am I looking at a blog?), but are they controlling for other variables, or is this just the straight data? I'm specifically thinking about education, but maybe race & gender too. IIRC playing around with GSS, holding race & gender constant, income makes one slightly more conservative (holding education equal) and education makes more one slightly more liberal (or at least socially liberal), holding income constant. I wonder what happens to the bends in those curves if they control for education (assuming they haven't) or if don't (assuming they have)?

Re: I Am a Dysonite

ryan yin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:19:34 -0000

Odograph,
Sure, those are facts, but I'm not sure they have the policy implications you seem to be assuming. If you have a consequentialist view of environmental issues, there's no reason why, for instance, being able to prevent the extinction of a big edible fish implies that you ought to prevent it. (That is, the natural resource econ literature explicitly allows for an "optimal extinction.")
Though I may be misreading you and merely stating the obvious.

Re: I Am a Dysonite

ryan yin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:27:27 -0000

Well, first of all, "humanity" doesn't seek anything. More to the point, the issue isn't "would we rather have more big fish or not?" That gives a non-interesting answer to a non-interesting question. The better question is, is the present discounted value of the amount of extra big fish we get in the future from catching one less today greater than the value of catching said fish? The key point with big fish is that the "return" to leaving it in the water is lower.

I think poverty might cut in the opposite direction you're implying, given economic growth. If world poverty rates are declining and average income is increasing (so we expect to have more in the future than today), then that pushes for consuming more today. After all, if we're making an argument about transferring from the rich to the poor, well, future generations are richer than the current one, and since we're already discounting the future ...

Re: I Am a Dysonite

ryan yin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:29 -0000

No, I'm saying that I don't think a (competent) alien naturalist would believe that human have a hivemind. If you want to talk coherently about purposes and goals, you have to talk about individuals.

Re: I Am a Dysonite

ryan yin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:43:15 -0000

Speaking of "pulling a fast one" and being excited -- it's entirely possible you're misunderstanding what's being said (or that you're being wildly unfair). I didn't "call" for optimal extinction. I pointed out that you can't be a good consequentialist on environmental policy as you claimed if you're ruling out a priori the possibility that the extinction of a species or environmental degradation in general might be optimal. And no, you don't get to say that these might be in principle be okay but only way in the future and that these things are inherently suboptimal in the immediate future. Or at least you don't if you really are committed to being the hard-headed, consequentialist empiricist on environmental & natural resource issues that you insisted to Wilkinson that you were.

I didn't define optimal extinction because I thought it was obvious, particularly given my other comments. You choose policy as best you can (from the set of all policies available to us) to maximize present discounted value, and if it turns out that the policy that best achieves that goal involves one species dying out, you call it "optimal extinction".

Now consider an extreme, very unrealistic example (just as a mental exercise): suppose there were some infinitely lived species that never reproduced at all (so leaving them alone doesn't increase future population) and that had no aesthetic or other value besides eating them. It's very easy to imagine that there would be an "optimal extinction" here (it's basically a nonrenewable resource, and it's not like reasonable people think we should never use them). In fact, if you can scale up your catch cheaply enough, and if the marginal value of the fish doesn't drop off too quickly (or you just expect to be richer and/or have plenty of alternatives in the future), that optimal extinction would be almost immediate.

Now please note that I'm not saying this is a realistic example. But I think it does a pretty good job of laying out the reasons why we would want to preserve a species -- e.g., if there are important (and good) interactions with other species or aesthetics or other value that you can get besides eating a fish, if marginal value drops rapidly, if the species grows or reproduces rapidly (or otherwise increases value), etc. And if you extend it, you can see how it's almost certainly not generally the case that the ideal is to shoot for the maximum sustainable yield.

Sorry for the overly long response.

Re: The Poor but Unusually Chipper and Long-Lived Index

ryan yin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:11:37 -0000

Wait, if it's a no-envy principle, why does that mean it's an ok notion?

Re: The Poor but Unusually Chipper and Long-Lived Index

ryan yin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:45:07 -0000

I think that's too short an answer. Why would you think this goal should be the objective. I mean, just for starters, it's not Pareto efficient. I'm not saying you have to be a pure Paretian, but explaining why we ought to follow any particular rule that violates Pareto is a pretty high hurdle, even in the best of circumstances. And the no-envy principle isn't in that position: it's got time issues (can people born in different times envy you? what about people whose lives only partially overlap yours?) and people advocating that position clearly don't seem to really mean it (unless they mean it only applies within national borders, which is problematic too). So I think a huge effort at defense is needed here.

Re: Gregory Clark Uses Computer over Phone, Predicts “Economic Redundany” of Working Class

ryan yin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:22:06 -0000

Isn't it a little unfair to say Will is advocating heroic and politically difficult policy changes? My impression was Greg Clark was advocating massive increases in redistribution, and apparently, i.e., before we have any evidence that for once the broken clock happens to be right and this time economic and technological growth will actually turn out to be bad for the poor. Is this not a heroic and politically difficult change? At least Will is responding to a problem that isn't merely speculative.

[Not to mention that Clark infers from the health care debate that there exists massive demand for equality of outcomes, despite (a) having already pointed out that Americans have no such desire with regard to most other things, suggesting that maybe people's political notions about health care are radically different from those about other issues, and (b) that there is growing evidence that Americans want lower costs a lot more than they want universal coverage, to say nothing of equality of coverage.]

Re: Gregory Clark Uses Computer over Phone, Predicts “Economic Redundany” of Working Class

ryan yin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:46:04 -0000

Excellent point. Some of the literature seems to acknowledge that unidimensional skill might not be a reasonable approximation but points out that modeling with multiple dimensions is just too complex to be tractable.

(Sometimes it's suggested that if you say "skill" has multiple dimensions, it's really hard to get clear policy prescriptions like "cut taxes" or "make taxes more progressive." Which I suppose might be kind of damning about the whole business.)

Re: Is Medicaid Something I Dreamed?

ryan yin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:28:36 -0000

Two differences. One is the liberty/personal responsibility thing. The other is a basic efficiency argument: they're only identical if they would've spent that $x on that good. But they almost certainly wouldn't have bought exactly the same thing, so in-kind transfers are almost always less efficient than cash transfers (unless, of course, the gift isn't actually motivated by literal altruism, e.g., "I'm not giving you this service b/c it'll make you happier and I'm happier when you're happier; I'm giving it to you b/c I am happier when you consume this service, whether it makes you happier or not, and I'm kinda doubtful that if I were to give you money you'd spend it on this service").

Re: Arnold Kling on Freedom as Exit

ryan yin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:26:55 -0000

That last bit isn't 100% true: when you tax carbon (or use permits), you raise the price of consumption, which means you're effectively lowering the return to labor, which is already distorted anyway. I guess this isn't a "new" inefficiency, in that we already have income taxes, but that kind of seems like splitting hairs to me; we would be creating more inefficiency, not just passing up the opportunity to reduce them.

Re: Is Medicaid Something I Dreamed?

ryan yin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:09:36 -0000

It's true that expanding Medicaid doesn't help curb either the price of health care or expenditures on health care. But then again, neither do the actual bills going through Congress. That doesn't even seem to be the issue Klein is addressing.

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:35:24 -0000

The larger sample seems like a good point, but I think you're giving the followers argument short shrift. I'm not necessarily claiming it's incredibly strong evidence, but surely the actions of people following a theory are some evidence, in a Bayesian sense? If you had two theories that you were equally likely were correct/good, and then you noticed that literally every single person following one was a psychopath and everyone following the other went on to accomplish wonderful things that made society better, would you still literally be indifferent between the two? Those records would literally give you no information?

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:36:42 -0000

oops, sloppy proofreading. "... two theory that you thought were equally ..."

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:55:35 -0000

Good points, all. Except that he was a really bad philosopher, historian, and observer. It's kind of a travesty of horrible misconstruals and willful misreadings.

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:39:03 -0000

Isn't it more like saying, for example, Will Wilkinson is more acceptable than Tim McVeigh"? Who are these mass-murdering Objectivists? (And if they exist, why aren't they the ones who are giving Objectivism a bad name, rather than someone saying "hey, murder is bad, and mass murder more so"?)

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:28:07 -0000

No one argues that Marx didn't criticize capitalism. What's being argued is that his argument is really shoddy, his history is entirely bunk, his economics painfully & demonstrably wrong, that his philosophy is flawed and sort of silly, and, oh yeah, that people putting his ideas into effect are the world's biggest mass-murderers. And don't pull this "Marxism has never been tried" nonsense. If that were true, then you wouldn't have seen defenses of the Soviets et al up to their collapse (not to mention the idiots who still walk around wearing Mao & Che t-shirts). And, no, in point of fact, Marx wasn't a great human rights-loving hater of dictators.

Re: What We Are Not Embarrassed Of

ryan yin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:29:42 -0000

Right, I can see how you can think that failing to give someone money and mass-murder are roughly identical to a first approximation. That's a good point. And given that the market demonstrably does infinitely more to help the poor than legions of sophomoric Marxists ever have, you certainly do seem to be making a good argument that in no way constitutes an embarrassing defense of the indefensible.

And hey, it's not like Marx ever advocated dictatorship or ever said that the communist utopia can and should be accomplished by force in certain circumstances (can you imagine how embarrassing it'd be either of those were true?). But I think you're a little unfair to Stalin. He actually accomplished quite a bit of economic equalization -- you know, kill the rich people, destroy the sources of wealth, make everyone equally poor. What's not to love?

Re: Flaws and Frictions

ryan yin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:27:20 -0000

To be fair, I'm not sure they're claiming Pareto optimality, nor that price signals are "reliable" in the sense of being perfectly accurate. The public choice criticism of intervention in particular doesn't seem to make the claim that without the median voter and a lot of government rent-seeking, we would be in the best of all possible worlds. I read it as more akin to saying, "hey, if you think transaction costs and imperfect information and bounded rationality lead to suboptimal results by private actors, think about how much worse they get in a voting environment."

It's also not clear to me the premise Peter Twieg refers to is one that Chicago political economists always hold -- you'll see the argument made that both market and government action are Pareto optimal.