Is A Procreation License Consistent With Libertarianism?

In case you missed it, here's the basic argument of my previous blog entry (What Do Coywolves, Mr. Nobody, Plants And Fungi All Have In Common?)...

1. Every living organism has the inherent biological imperative to choose the most valuable option (MVO)
2. Humans have far more processing power (cognitive abilities) than any other animals
3. Allowing people to choose where their taxes go would have extremely logical and beneficial consequences.

Towards the end of the blog entry I shared this picture...

This picture inspired me to address the topic of a procreation license.  It's an interesting enough topic to warrant its own blog entry.  Plus, it has plenty of positive externalities.  So here we are.

What Do Coywolves, Mr. Nobody, Plants And Fungi All Have In Common?

Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Presumably, individuals would prefer to pay less for virtually any good or service, since doing so rationally maximizes their utility from payment (Becker 1962). - Cait Lamberton, A Spoonful of Choice

This blog entry is dedicated to exploring the fact that the innate drive to maximize benefit (MB) isn't just a fundamental part of human nature, it's a fundamental part of every organism's nature.  As such, I should probably put the bottom line up front...

Extending consumer choice to the public sector would greatly MB

Here's the outline of the argument...

1. MB depends on choosing the most valuable option (MVO)
2. All living organisms want to MB so they endeavor to choose the MVO
3. No two organisms are equally good at choosing the MVO
4. Being better at choosing the MVO increases fitness
5. Choosing the MVO depends on accurate information
6. Humans are the best at choosing the MVO
7. Humans are the best at storing and processing information
8. The desire to choose the MVO is the core of consumer choice
9. Narrowing the scope of consumer choice results in less information being processed
10. Blocking consumer choice from the public sector narrows the scope of consumer choice
11. Far less information is exchanged/processed for public goods
12. Public goods largely fail to MB
13. Extending consumer choice to the public sector would greatly MB

Unless I'm missing something, the universal drive to try and MB doesn't have a name.  For now let's just call it "linvoid".

Bueller's Basement

Right now there are only three search results for "Bueller's Basement" (BB).  Each result is a blog entry of mine.  I officially own this exact term.  Rather than having to explain what BB is every time I use the term...I figured that it would be easier (more efficient) to dedicate this blog entry to the full, and then some, explanation.  This way I can just link to this entry in the future.  As in...modular versus monolithic.

BB is kind of like the blog equivalent of a book's afterword.  For me, personally, it presents the opportunity to offer some additional, tangential or random insights and thoughts.

The term BB was inspired by the short scene after the ending of the iconic movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off (FBDO)...





"You're still here?  It's over.  Go home.  Go."

Futarchy vs Pragmatarianism

My last two posts were about Robin Hanson...

• Is Robin Hanson's Path To Efficient Voting Pragmatic Or Brilliant Or Both?
• Rescuing Robin Hanson From Unmet Demand

A recent post by Scott Sumner...Stone Age Economics...inspired me to create my third post in a row about Robin Hanson.  It's a Robin Hanson trilogy!

Thanks to Sumner, I learned about Hanson's idea of futarchy.  Here's the Wikipedia entry...futarchy...and the paper that Sumner linked to... Shall We Vote on Values, But Bet on Beliefs?

As you can tell from the title of this entry...futarchy is similar enough to pragmatarianism to warrant contrast/comparison.  Actually, they are so similar that it's somewhat surprising that I'm only just now learning about futarchy.  This reflects the fact that information is dispersed.

Let's review...

2009:  I started posting online here and there about pragmatarianism.
2010:  A member of the libertarian party facebook page informed me that several years back he had read a short sci-fi story about people choosing where their taxes go.  Unfortunately, he couldn't remember the title or the author.  A web search proved fruitless.
2012 April 17:  A year and a half later, a member of one of the political forums I participated on replied to one of my posts with this...

BTW, there's a science fiction short story based on the premise of individual allocation of taxes. It's called "We the People", written by Jack Haldeman:  http://www.sff.net/people/jack.haldeman/people.htm

2012 April 18:  I posted this blog entry... We, The People - Jack C. Haldeman II
2014 April 17:  Somebody posted a comment on my FAQ page asking whether I'd heard of quadratic voting (QV).  That was the first time that I'd ever heard of it.  QV has been around since at least 2012...which is when Steven Levitt posted an entry about it... An Alternative to Democracy?
2015 Jan 3:  Tyler Cowen posted about QV... My thoughts on quadratic voting and politics as education
2015 Jan 7:  I posted a reply... What Would Tyler Cowen Do For A Klondike Bar?
2015 Jan 9:  Hanson posted an entry on QV...Trade Quarks, Not Votes
2015 Jan 11: I posted a reply... Is Robin Hanson's Path To Efficient Voting Pragmatic Or Brilliant Or Both?
2015 Jan 27:  Thanks to Sumner, I learned about futarchy for the first time.  Hanson proposed futarchy back in 2000.

It should be a self-evident truth that I wish that I had known about Haldeman's sci-fi story and all these other relevant articles and papers sooner rather than later.  Same thing with QV, futarchy, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek and Buchanan.

Information was inefficiently allocated (I didn't have it)...but then it was efficiently allocated (now I have it).  Increasing the rate at which information is efficiently allocated could be accomplished simply by giving people more opportunity to put their money where their mouths are.  This is exactly what both futarchy and pragmatarianism would do.

Futarchy would create a prediction market for public policies while pragmatarianism would create a market in the public sector.  Futarchy would give people the opportunity to bet their own private dollars on public policies while pragmatarianism would give people the opportunity to bet their own tax dollars on public goods.

These bets would help cut through the bullshit...

Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief.  A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge. - Alex Tabarrok, A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit

A bet instantly raises the marginal private cost of error, which leads to a sharp increase in rationality. Faced with financial consequences, people suddenly - if temporarily - admit to themselves that they know a lot less than they like to believe - and bet accordingly. - Bryan Caplan, Beating the Odds: Why Do People Insist on Even Bets?

The usual touchstone, whether that which someone asserts is merely his persuasion -- or at least his subjective conviction, that is, his firm belief -- is betting. It often happens that someone propounds his views with such positive and uncompromising assurance that he seems to have entirely set aside all thought of possible error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes it turns out that he has a conviction which can be estimated at a value of one ducat, but not of ten. For he is very willing to venture one ducat, but when it is a question of ten he becomes aware, as he had not previously been, that it may very well be that he is in error. If, in a given case, we represent ourselves as staking the happiness of our whole life, the triumphant tone of our judgment is greatly abated; we become extremely diffident, and discover for the first time that our belief does not reach so far. Thus pragmatic belief always exists in some specific degree, which, according to differences in the interests at stake, may be large or may be small. - Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

Democracy (voting/shouting) aggregates shallow information (opinions) while markets (betting/spending) aggregates deep information (values).  Let's take prohibition for example.  People voted for it, but I'm pretty sure that when confronted with the alternative uses of their own tax dollars, most of them would have decided that many of the alternatives were far more valuable.

The problem with voting is that, unlike with spending, people are not forced to confront, compare, calculate and personally bear the opportunity costs.  It's simply people stating their preferences...which is why all contingent valuation techniques are aptly referred to as cheap talk surveys.  The inevitable consequence of relying on superficial/shallow input is that allocations which would have created more value are replaced with allocations which create less value.

With this in mind, futarchy is a good idea for the same exact reason that pragmatarianism is a good idea.  But will Hanson agree that pragmatarianism is a good idea?  Or will he decline to comment on the idea just like every other economist?

Well...I'm exaggerating a bit.  Three economists have commented on pragmatarianism...

Noah Smith's critique.  Basically, Smith feels it would be a coordination problem.  As if he would have to consult with me before spending his taxes on public healthcare just like he has to consult with me before buying a pair of shoes.  Except, he's never consulted with me before buying a pair of shoes.  Maybe he would if I was a shoe expert?  I don't want to be a shoe expert.  Being an epiphyte expert is far more rewarding.  And it also explains why people have consulted with me before buying epiphytes.

Arnold Kling's comment...

I think that allowing taxpayers to allocate their taxes would be an improvement, but why stop with government organizations? Why not allow them also to choose from competing charitable organizations? That is what I propose in Unchecked and Unbalanced. 

Why stop with government organizations?  Well...it's nice to dream that we can even manage to start with government organizations.

David Friedman's comment...

I don't think that letting taxpayers allocate their taxes among options provided by the government solves the fundamental problems of government.

Isn't the only problem with government the absence of consumer choice?  Or is there a bigger problem?

At the end of this debate between Robin Hanson and Mencius Moldbug on futarchy...David Friedman countered Moldbug's arguments.  Here's a rough transcript of Friedman's counter...

The least important is that it doesn't require Darwinian selection.  There's a prior selection of people's willingness to bet.  That they are putting their money where their mouth is and on average, people know something about whether they know how to play chess or not and the non chess players would be less willing to bet than the chess players.  So that weakens your argument but it doesn't destroy it.  

There are two more serious problems.  One of them is that there's a reason why y is bigger than x and that is because the desire to make money is a common motive for enormous numbers of people.  Whereas any particular outcome is only going to apply to a certain number of people.  You have to think about your Apple example.  It's a wonderful example because it's so bad.  That you, I and everybody else knows what happens if you replace Steve Jobs with a chimpanzee.  Consequently, if Google wants to waste $20 billion dollars trying to bid the odds of that up...there will be much much more than $20 billion because people will say, "wait a minute, Google wants to give us some money, wonderful!"  We know that if Steve Jobs is replaced by a chimp that the Apple stock will fall.  I, as a stock holder, oppose doing that and therefore would like to shift it, just like Google would like to shift it in the other direction, but I, as an investor, know that it's a very very safe bet that the stock will go down if Jobs is replaced and will therefore bet accordingly.  So the fact that your x depends on particular circumstances and particular people, y, common to most people who have money seriously undermines your argument.

Finally, you're assuming that all the x's have the same sign but in any plausible case, such as the political case...there will be some people who want outcome A and some people who want outcome B.  And it's only the difference in the ability of those two groups to push the price one way or another that has to be outweighed by the people who don't care what the outcome is but just want to make money.  Think, for a moment, about futarchy versus alternatives.  And let me suggest an alternative which is a closer model than futarchy is to real political systems both democratic and nondemocratic...and that's a straight bidding war.  The system where people who want a tariff offer congressmen a certain amount of money to pass the tariff, people who don't want the tariff offer a certain amount of money not to pass the tariff and whichever number is larger determines what happens.  It's not a perfect model for how our system works but it's not too bad.  What futarchy does is to weight that system towards the truth.  Futarchy says that if the people that want the tariff are willing to spend more money than people who don't want it...that we'll only get the tariff if the difference is enough to outweigh all the disinterested betters who just want to make money.  So therefore futarchy, as opposed to that alternative, pushes you to more correct decisions.  

From just this portion, you kinda get the sense that Friedman is on board with futarchy...but then later on he does some head shaking.  Plus, how on board could he be if he's never even dedicated a single blog entry in support the concept?  If he had, then I would have learned about futarchy sooner rather than later.

Moldbug, on the other hand, has dedicated an entry to the concept... Futarchy considered retarded.

It really isn't a surprise that Moldbug thinks futarchy is retarded.  The guy really hates democracy but he's entirely clueless about how to improve search engine results...The future of search.  Improving search is as simple as giving people the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is... Crowd Sponsored Results (CSR).

I wonder what Hanson would say about CSR?

On the Wikipedia entry for futarchy...I learned of this blog entry by Tyler Cowen...Where do I disagree with Robin Hanson?  It's not a surprise that Cowen isn't a fan of futarchy either.

But I thought it would be potentially insightful to take the opportunity to do something kinda similar to Cowen's blog entry.  Rather than create a list of things that I disagree with Hanson on...I'll create a list of things that I support.  If it matches his preferences to do so, Hanson can indicate whether he agrees or disagrees with them.

My guess is that he'll agree with all of them.  Why?  Because Hanson is a huge fan of futarchy...which is based on the solid premise that we increase the value of outcomes by giving people more opportunities to put their money where their mouths are.  All the things that I'll list will be based on this same exact premise.  So it will be very fascinating if Hanson opposes any of the things that I support.

For example, if Hanson says that he LOVES bananas...then we should be able to use this information to reasonably predict that he's also a fan of the following...

• Banana bread
• Banana chips  
• Banana splits
• Banana pancakes
• Banana smoothies
• Banana and peanut butter
• Bananas covered in chocolate

The more of these things he dislikes, the more we'd suspect his LOVE of bananas.  It's not a perfect analogy but the point is to emphasize a common premise.

Here are 5 ideas that I support...

1. Pragmatarianism (FAQ).  As I've already explained, allowing taxpayers to choose where their taxes go would give them the opportunity to put their own tax dollars where their mouths are.
2. Crowd Sponsored Results (CSR).  Allowing the crowd to dollar vote up...or down...search results would vastly improve the rankings.
3. Unbundling Cable.  Unbundling cable would give consumers the opportunity to put their money where their favorite channels/shows were.  For more info... Crazy Cable Confusion: Costless Content Creation
4. Netflix fee allocation.  Netflix subscribers should be able to allocate their monthly fees to their favorite shows.  Haven't written about this one yet.
5. Vote trading.  Allowing people to buy and sell votes would give them the opportunity to put their money where their votes are.  For more info...What Would Tyler Cowen Do For A Klondike Bar?

All these ideas follow from the basic premise that the outcome is more valuable when people are given the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are.  In other words, they all flowcilitate deep input.

We're essentially trying to answer the fundamental question of what we should do with society's limited resources.  People's answers to this question are more accurate/honest/truthful when they are given the opportunity to spend their own money.  As the accuracy of their answers improve, so too will the value of the allocation.

Probably the best heuristic for computer geeks is Garbage In, Garbage Out.  Socialism (command economies = our public sector) produces garbage because the input is garbage.  The input is garbage because it doesn't accurately reflect people's values.  If the input doesn't truly reflect people's values, then why would people truly value the output?

Rescuing Robin Hanson From Unmet Demand

Robin Hanson has a BIG problem.  He wants to read books that nobody's writing!

Industry-Era Action Stories

Let me tell him something...

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You're in a boat, surely you aren't the only one.  I'd definitely read a book or watch a movie, or two, or three...or a few shows...about the first few foreign firms to make significant profits in China after my hero Deng Xiaoping opened the doors.

The challenge here is that it's kinda difficult to know exactly how many other people are in the same boat.  We can't buy a product that doesn't exist!

But what if people could choose where their taxes go?  Let's pretend that there was a department of books (DoB).  Because good books are a public good...right?  Surely they have all sorts of positive externalities.  Especially the types that don't require the murder of trees.  Digital books sure aren't rivalrous.

Taxpayers could give the DoB some of their taxes and the DoB would use the money to pay authors to write books that everybody could read for freeeeeeeee!

Of course taxpayers wouldn't all want to sponsor/read the same books.  So when you went to the DoB website to make a tax payment, you could check mark which types of books that you'd want your money to be spent on.  

You, me, and all the other cool kids would check mark "builderism".  And voila!  Pretty soon our digital libraries would be jam packed with exciting and educational stories about where better options come from.  Movies and shows would surely follow.

What would stop the DoB from spending our money on teen vampire novels?  Well...nothing.  Except for the fact that we probably wouldn't give the DoB any more of our taxes if it did so.

In the movie Field of Dreams the motto was, "if you build it they will come".  With pragmatarianism the motto would be, "if you fund it they will write/build/make/produce/supply it".

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While writing this I had the vaguest recollection that I'd written something kinda similar to David Friedman.  So I searched for unmet site:daviddfriedman.blogspot.com and found my comment on this post of his...

The Killer App for Google Glass

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What if the government ended up being responsible for creating the app? Then the usual suspects could list it along with the internet.

So is it market failure that the private sector hasn't already created this app?

See...I'm pretty sure this is an example of why pragmatarianism is superior to anarcho-capitalism. With anarcho-capitalism...the demand would exist but the supply wouldn't reflect it. It might eventually reflect it...but who knows when. But with a pragmatarianism system...if there was sufficient demand...a government program could be created to work on the provision of whatever it was that people were willing to spend their taxes on.

The government would be the embodiment of demand unmet by the private sector. How could that not be better than anarcho-capitalism?

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It would also be nice to have an app that allowed us to talk with our pets.

Perhaps this is the best passage for clarifying demand...

There are multitudes with an interest in peace, but they have no lobby to match those of the 'special interests' that may on occasion have an interest in war. - Mancur Olson 

It's easy enough to give them a "lobby".  Jack Haldeman shared the solution in his short science fiction story..."We the People".

I suppose that it wouldn't be impossible to create a site kinda like patreon.com that allowed members to sponsor specific types of content that they'd like to see created.  But it's a bit of a buzzkill to make the content excludable in order to avoid the free-rider problem.    

Is Robin Hanson's Path To Efficient Voting Pragmatic Or Brilliant Or Both?

Robin Hanson's blog entry...Trade Quarks, Not Votes...is making me kinda crazy.  I really want to say that he's trying to promote the creation of a new type of currency.  Hmmm....so why don't I?  Ok, I will.  Robin Hanson is trying to promote the creation of a new type of currency.  There.  I said it.  If it's wrong...then he's more than welcome to categorically deny and disclaim it.  But if he does so, then, honestly...I'll be tempted to question whether he's protesting too much.  heh.

What kind of currency does Hanson want to create?  A civic currency.  Yup.

The Inadequacy Of The Opportunity Cost Concept

Imagine a carpenter using a headless hammer to try and drive a nail.  After a while he stops hitting the nail with the wooden handle and scratches his head wondering what the problem is.  Would you tell him that, in order for a hammer to be effective, the handle needs a solid metal head?

For a while now I've been trying to use the opportunity cost concept to knock some economic sense into people.  Unfortunately it's not working.  Opportunity cost, as a tool, is obviously missing something essential.  But what's it missing?

Maybe it will help to have a day dream discussion with the liberal economist John Quiggin (my second favorite Crooked Timber liberal)...

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Xero:  Thanks for paying for my plane ticket to Australia...I've always wanted to visit.
Quiggin:  You're very welcome.  I've been looking forward to meeting you for a while.
Xero: Likewise!
Quiggin: Are you hungry?  I've got the barbie fired up and there's plenty of cold beer.
Xero: Awesome!  I love bbq and beer...almost as much as I love economics.  Speaking of which...how's it going with Hazlitt's sequel?
Quiggin: As you know, I've been working on this book for a really long time now.  I'd like to make sure that it's as solid as possible, which is of course why you're here!
Xero: You're writing a book based on the fact that opportunity cost is what matters...so I'm more than happy to help out any way that I can.
Quiggin:  As somebody who has extensively studied the opportunity cost concept, what faults do you see with my understanding of it?
Xero:  You argue, for example, that war has significant opportunity costs (here, here and here), which I completely agree with. Perhaps more often than not, there are much more valuable uses of society's limited resources.  The inherent problem I see with your argument is that you give no plausible method for accurately assessing the value of war compared to the value of the alternatives.  You just list some nice alternatives to war and expect your readers to assume that any of these alternatives would have created more value for society.
Quiggin: And your solution would be to allow taxpayers to choose where their taxes go?
Xero:  Yes, if our theory is correct that war really isn't the most valuable use of society's limited resources, then most members of society will not be willing to sacrifice the alternative uses of their own tax dollars.
Quiggin:  Isn't there another way to accurately asses the value of the alternatives?
Xero:  The mainstream method has been to simply assume omniscience on the part of government leaders.  But if you maintain this absurd assumption, then you really can't ever question whether war is truly the most valuable use of society's limited resources.  Given that you do question the allocation decisions of government leaders, it means that you've dropped this absurd assumption...but you haven't shared which valuation system you've replaced it with.

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Let's break it down...

1. War uses limited resources that could have been put to different uses
2. Some of those different uses might have created more value for society
3. It's important for resources to create more, rather than less, value for society

What Would Tyler Cowen Do For A Klondike Bar?

Would Tyler Cowen do this for a Klondike Bar?  Does it really matter what Cowen would do for a Klondike Bar?  Does it really matter how much Cowen values a Klondike Bar?  Does it really matter how much Cowen values dessert?  Does it really matter how much Cowen values food?  Does it really matter how much Cowen values national defense?

How could these things not matter?  Perhaps Cowen's valuation of food matters but his valuation of defense does not?  Because...he needs to be a defense expert in order for his valuation of his own safety to matter?  Just like he needs to be a food expert in order for his valuation of his own hunger to matter?

Personally, I think Cowen's valuations do matter.  Not just some of them...but all of them.  If I didn't, then I wouldn't be such a big fan of the idea of allowing everybody to directly allocate their taxes.

What's surprising and very intriguing is that neither Cowen nor his co-blogger Alex Tabarrok agree with me.  They don't believe that all their valuations matter...just some of them.  Why do they have a valuation double standard (VDS)?  How important could individual valuation really be if it's only partially applicable?

In a few blog entries I've encouraged them to defend/explain/justify their VDS...

• Prices vs Chips - 16 May 2014
• Heaven's Going To Burn Your Eyes - 20 May 2014
• Crazy Cable Confusion: Costless Content Creation - 2 June 2014
• Progress as a Function of Freedom - 1 July 2014

To his credit, Tabarrok did take the the time to respond.  Unfortunately, his response didn't really clear things up.

But a few days ago I was happy to discover that Cowen posted a blog entry that provided some tantalizing insight into his VDS...

My thoughts on quadratic voting and politics as education

The concept of quadratic voting was first brought to my attention last year in a comment on the tax choice FAQ page.  This was my reply to the comment...

Builderism

Anybody else starting 2015 with a cold?  Sore throat, runny nose, achiness...it's really not the best way to start a new year.  So far no good.  I'm not superstitious, much, but I do feel some need to offset this lousiness with lots of awesomeness.  So I'm going to post this entry today even though it could probably do with a few more days/years of refining.  To help hedge my bets, at the end I'll share my recipe for the very best breakfast to make when you're sick.

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Who really helps the poor?  Does Cutlass?

Context: Welfare Theorem vs Progress Theorem

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A huge part of the problem here is that you think that elections (cheap talk surveys) accurately reflect the demand for public goods...

No, I don't. Because elections can't segment out that level of discrimination. But they can and do aggregate it, to a point. And within a useful margin for discussion. So while it is an imperfect measure of preference, and while it is an aggregated measure, rather than an individual measure, it still is a measure of revealed preferences.

And that revealed preference is for not helping the poor. Not beyond a minimum point, anyways.

Taxpayers, at least initially, would be paying the same taxes. They would be able to choose where their taxes go...and congress would still be in charge of determining the tax rate. So the amount of money that congress itself receives will reflect how satisfied taxpayers are with the tax rate. If the tax rate is too high...or too low...then congress will lose money. And whether the tax rate is too high...or too low...depends on how much value the public sector is creating relative to the private sector. To learn more...pragma-socialism.

Now you are opening yourself to 2 economic fallacies: Free rider problems and public goods problems. People will express false preference in order to save themselves a buck, and free ride on the generosity of others. And that causes a public goods problem, in that underinvestment in public goods is the normal course of individual preferences.

Education doesn't benefit the poor?

Giving endowments to major universities doesn't feed or house the poor.

The Koch brothers employ far more people than I do...so I'm certainly in no position to judge their concern for other people's welfare.

Employing people has nothing to do with providing aid the poor. The Koch brothers, on the other hand, spend vast fortunes to try to convince people of their point of view, and that point of view is that government should take from the poor and give to the Koch brothers.

So, in effect, you started this discussion with the brief of making things better for the poor through a different means of government. But then since then you've been defending making the poor much worse off by empowering those who want to harm them, and disenfranchising those who wish to help them.

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If somebody was a connoisseur of contradictory arguments then they might really appreciate this guy's argument.  Let me try and break it down...

1. Voting adequately reveals people's preferences
2. People don't really want to help the poor
3. People lie in order to save a buck
4. Pragmatarianism would...
A. disenfranchise those who want to help the poor
B. empower those who want to hurt the poor

#3 negates #1 and #2 negates #4A.  Except, if #1 isn't true, as this paper suggests, then perhaps neither is #2.  If people really do want to help the poor, then would pragmatarianism prevent them from doing so?