> Feasibility and efficacy are inversely related, within the liberal mindset of state capitalism & its institutions.
From a Law & Econ perspective, the feasibility of producing policy is determined by the incentive structures presented to policy makers. It's not true that efficacy and feasibility are considered to be universally inversely related within Law & Econ. That'd be a ridiculous argument because it'd suggest that we'd always have minimally effective laws, which we clearly don't.
> Now, it's true, this betrays they don't understand econ because subjecting measures of evaluation and mechanisms of competition to those very measures of evaluation and mechanisms of competition creates a paradox. Equilibrium analysis famously cannot handle meta/endogenous preferences--i.e. preferences about preferences or the systems in which they are expressed and this is why I think Law & Econ is stupid.
Could you elaborate on this?
I'm in the process of reading a book about game theory and law. Its author attempts to model the origins and development of law as a competitive game.
I don't see a paradox in the claim that competitive markets for goods in services are a product of property laws which themselves are a product of some different but related competitive process.
Let me summarize the conversation as I see it so far.
The majority of your first post consists of descriptions of a number of simplifying assumptions economists make, and when and why they break down. You follow this up with an argument that economic models may become useless when they are made public and markets act on the information these models provide.
All of that is fine, and I can't find anything glaring that I disagree with. However, you then go on to state that modeling human behavior with incentive based frameworks is unjustified due to the simplifying assumptions they require, and that we should rely on more psychology and moral philosophy instead.
I responded that moral philosophy is not in the business of predicting human behavior, whereas economics and psychology are i.e. that moral philosophers make normative claims whereas economists and psychologists make descriptive claims (many economists also make normative claims).
Most of your second post consists of a collection of criticisms of mainstream economics methodology. However you do briefly address Playing Fair's (the book I'm reading) claim, that incentive structures can be useful in modeling the development of law.
> The problem is that if utility is truly invariant, as it must be for economics & as in stated by revealed preference theory, then it is the method of evaluation all the way down, what varies are the objects evaluated within & between in. But this would mean property laws are judged according to a utility, perhaps something like a Rawlsian social contract (itself nonsense) and then economic objects are evaluated within that regime and then are ranking according to utility. But, now you already have the issue that the monetary utility function which equilibrates the utility function of the property laws chosen may be different from that which would rank the objects monetarily evaluated judged according to a different utility function (use or survival) or the one assumed by economic theory.
The author Ken Binmore claims that laws can be well represented as a bargaining solution to a game. He's pretty explicit that although his models attempt to incorporate the players' moral beliefs, the models' predictions are amoral (they can predict universally undesirable outcomes).
As to whether his models are accurate or whether is simplifying assumptions are too strong, these are questions that can be resolved empirically.
My intuition is that game theory and incentive frameworks will prove themselves to be useful for describing the development of legal systems.
> I'd rather it be rationed by money, than by political panels who award life or death based on people's support for them or lack thereof. You get money by working. I'm okay with healthcare going to people who work before it goes to people who choose not to. You want healthcare? Work! Not too hard.
You realize that’s not what I’ve argued for, right?
> Bernie Sanders wants to protect people from their own decisions. If they lead an unhealthy lifestyle, ehh! No worries, free healthcare!
Health (much like education) is an essential service. It’s. A. Basic. Public. Service. All of our lives, as a community, as a nation, depend upon it. Getting money out of politics is protecting people against their own decisions? Fixing an institutional problem in our prison system is protecting people from their decisions? If that's a sin, I'll take it. One wonders what the hell you're focused on.
> If they have no repayment history, shitty academic performance in high school, and want to study something that has pretty low returns in working life? Ehhh! No worries, free college! The man is the spitting image of protecting bad decisions. Hillary and the Republicans, for that matter, aren't much better, but they are better. They aren't overtly moving to protect people from themselves... just subtly moving that way.
Personally, I’d like not to think you’re such an idiot to not know what policies he has proposed that the only response you can muster is the same kind of childish diatribe that’s parroted and masquerades as a Republican talking point. I'll pretend that I didn't read that.
> So, you admit that people would die due to lack of or restriction of care, then? Or would single-payer magically give all the necessary healthcare to all who request it, the end, utopia?
Wow, someone’s never heard of preventive care before.
> I didn't. I was never approached by anyone representing the people who call themselves "The United States of America" with the terms and conditions of living on this 3,000 mile wide landmass of 320 million people. I wasn't even educated on what the terms and conditions were that were being forced upon me by my birth in the oh-so-noble education system you were defending in the other thread - I had to learn, on my own, what I needed to do to use the roads, what I needed to NOT do to avoid being kidnapped by armed men and thrown into a cage, etc.
You acknowledge you're a citizen of this country right? By agreeing to be part of a community, you agree to abide by community vote. The social contract isn’t a fiction, it’s long since been fully established by game theory and evolutionary biology. There is no sense in which there is absolutely no such thing as a social contract.
> So I never agreed to shit, I just comply, because you think that getting people to agree with you has resulted in small armies of men with guns who will fuck me up if I don't. Good system, I can see it's supporters are really consistent with their application of morality.
Then you’re a thief. Someone that steals our shit (by benefiting from communal enterprises such as clean air, water, civilized adjudication of force, government created programs like the Internet, ad infinitum) without being party to our contract. We have the right to kick your ass the fuck out.
> lol
I’m to conclude your understanding of immigration is just as bad as your understanding of education and healthcare? Point taken.
> A baby-step towards parents having greater say and control over the upbringing of their children. People should raise kids, not states.
Good luck.
> Uhh, Common Core?
Finland? Germany? France? China? Japan? Sweden? Norway? Canada?
> Yes, it is. We disagree on this point. The difference between my ideal and yours, is that yours requires your "big government" to take my shit away from me by force.
Then move. Moreover, try that in a Libertarian dystopia like Somalia. When some warlord comes up to you and chops off your hand to steal your watch, shake your other fist at him and continue bitching about your rights. See how far that gets you. Quite frankly, I'd be relieved if you fucking got the hell out of my country.
You want the fundamental justification for why the State has the right to be involved in our education? The right to protect all of us from the consequences of an uneducated population, that's what right. Moreover, what rights can you have in any sense, if a State doesn't exist to set up the institutions to define and enforce the values you supposedly cherish so much? Otherwise you can't have a right to jack shit.
> The difference is that governments (and the people in them) have profoundly more power over people like you and me, than people like you and me have over each other. Governments are not us. Governments are not the same as "society." Governments are distinct organizations. They are them. They are deliberately not us.
Governments are nothing but people like you and me. Even neoliberal, market fundamentalist idiots like Milton Friedman have admitted as much, explicitly. They're not some parasitic foreign entity that sits on top of the host and sucks all the blood out of it. The government routinely makes innovations and adds value to the society. Not just in markets, but to our general welfare, as a whole. I'm not some pro-government apologist and I don’t like the current state of our healthcare and education anymore than you do. That doesn’t commit me to thinking the solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.