Justice Roberts endorsed this view when he said, "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." This statement presume that the Affordable care act is the natural extension of the people's political choice. The people got what they should have expected after they voted for certain politicians.
Public choice theory, in contrast, explains that we often get laws that do not reflect the will of the people. Special interests can get laws passed that are not supported by most people because the benefits of the law are concentrated and internalized to the special interest, but the benefits to Americans at large are much smaller and diffuse. Thus, you get sugar quotas, which are bad on the whole because they drive sugar prices up for everyone. But because they only increase prices a little, sugar farmers, who reap huge profits from the quotas, are able to keep the policy in place against the presumptive will of the people.
The riddle I've been thinking about, is how do you make Democracy work better? How do you avoid this government tragedy of the commons where everyone seeks and gets special favors from government?
This is the "is-ought" trade off economists talk about. Economic theories attempt to approximately describe the way things actually work based on incentives and self-interest, instead of propose how things could work if everyone acted selflessly.
Because one answer to preventing this kind of special interest problem is simply to say, everyone should be selfless. I think that is basically the liberal answer. If everyone just stopped being greedy, things would be better.
But then people are self interested. It seems naive to base a system on the idea they will not act in their self interest. So we need a system based upon individuals pursuing their self interest.
This is the "is-ought" trade off economists talk about. Economic theories attempt to approximately describe the way things actually work based on incentives and self-interest, instead of propose how things could work if everyone acted selflessly.
Because one answer to preventing this kind of special interest problem is simply to say, everyone should be selfless. I think that is basically the liberal answer. If everyone just stopped being greedy, things would be better.
But then people are self interested. It seems naive to base a system on the idea they will not act in their self interest. So we need a system based upon individuals pursuing their self interest.
But it seems to me that when you allow for the fact that people will pursue their self interest, it becomes a lot harder to see what must change to stop special interests.
So perhaps special interests shouldn't lobby government for special favors. But then, lobbying for a favor is in the best interests of the special interest. So instead of saying stop lobbying, we should say politicians should stop giving out special favors. But again, public choice theory assumes that politicians are acting in accordance with their incentives. So, instead of saying politicians should buck their incentives, we should instead say that the public at large should throw the bums out to give the politicians an incentive to stop handing out favors to special interests. But then, that is hard to say, too, because people do vote. so why is that not already happening? Additionally, people have lots of competing demands on their time. Voters are rationally ignorant about what politicians do with their tax dollars. And that again is consistent with their incentives.
So, it's a little bit of a puzzle.
I have some thoughts about answers to this riddle, but I'll leave it there for now.
So perhaps special interests shouldn't lobby government for special favors. But then, lobbying for a favor is in the best interests of the special interest. So instead of saying stop lobbying, we should say politicians should stop giving out special favors. But again, public choice theory assumes that politicians are acting in accordance with their incentives. So, instead of saying politicians should buck their incentives, we should instead say that the public at large should throw the bums out to give the politicians an incentive to stop handing out favors to special interests. But then, that is hard to say, too, because people do vote. so why is that not already happening? Additionally, people have lots of competing demands on their time. Voters are rationally ignorant about what politicians do with their tax dollars. And that again is consistent with their incentives.
So, it's a little bit of a puzzle.
I have some thoughts about answers to this riddle, but I'll leave it there for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment