How we rank each other matters.

My comment on Once more for the people at the back: abortion rights and trans rights are the same struggle by Zoe Stavri. 

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Bodily autonomy?  You and I don't have the same body.   We have different bodies.  You know how I can tell?  It's because we have different DNA.  You know who else has different DNA?  Your mom.  My mom.  Every mom.  Mothers and children have different DNA.  Otherwise everybody would be clones.  Are you happy that we're not all clones?  I sure am. 

Imagine if I invite you over to see my really nice garden... it's brimming with nature.  Of course I'd first have to give you my address.  This is my property's unique ID.  When you find, and walk onto, my property, what happens to your bodily autonomy?  Do you lose any of your bodily autonomy?  Of course not.  That would be absurd.   In no case does any of my property, to include my own body, negate or diminish your bodily autonomy. 

By this same token, if you get pregnant, in no case does your bodily autonomy negate or diminish the bodily autonomy of the unique individual that is inside you. 

Let's say that, for whatever reason, I decide I no longer want you on my property.  Should I be free to eject you?  Sure, as long as doing so doesn't harm you.  If my property happens to be a boat that is surrounded by sharks, then I shouldn't be free to eject you. 

In a perfect world, ejecting unborn individuals at any time wouldn't at all be harmful.  Like, your fetus could be instantly and safely teleported across the galaxy into the womb of some other lady.   It wouldn't be like Adam and Eve getting ejected from the Garden of Eden into a harsh environment.  It would be like God moving them to another wonderful garden. 

Why would this be ideal?  Here's why...

We’ve spent the last few hundred years throwing out every Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk or Tim Berners-Lee who didn’t happen to be white, and didn’t happen to be a man. That’s a terrible thing to have done to those brilliant and now lost people. It’s a much worse thing to have done to the rest of humanity, including our white selves. When I think, “why don’t I have a jet car and live in Alpha Centuri by now?” I think this is because the people that would have invented sky cars and interstellar travel were born black in Detroit, or in rural India or in the medina in Algiers in the 1950s, and spent too much time figuring out how to eat and not get killed to invent my damned skycar. - Quinn Norton, How White People Got Made 

All progress depends on difference, which is why it's wonderful that we're not all clones.  Every unique individual contributes to humanity's diversity... and more diversity means more progress. 

Difference inherently means inequality.  The only way we could all be equal is if we were clones.  You naturally rank a woman and her unborn child very differently,  and so do I.  You also rank authors very differently, and so do I.   I'm sure we also rank economists very differently.   Personally, I rank economists much higher than feminists.  Since difference matters, it matters how we rank each other.  The question is whether voting (cheap signal) or spending (costly signal) is the best way to rank each other.   The answer to this question is clearly revealed by the top-ranked videos on Youtube.   Once we replace all cheap signals with costly signals, then it will be heaven on earth. 

Trading Thoughts With Koenfucius

In real life, when you meet somebody for the first time, it's rarely the case that the moment is persevered like a dragonfly in amber.   It's a different story on the internet.  For example, here's the very first time that I met Koenfucius.  I replied to his story and he replied to my reply.  That was the extent of our exchange.

Around a month or so later I replied to another story of his... Trading Values.  At the time, I didn't realize that he was the same guy that I had replied to a month before.  We ended up trading many many many thoughts about economics.  At some point I realized that I had previously replied to one of his stories.

What if I hadn't replied to the second story?  I would have missed out on so much valuable economic discussion.

Recently we've been trading thoughts in the comments section of this blog entry... A Penguin Introduces Henry Farrell To Ronald Coase.  Here's my reply to his most recent comment...

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I think that I remembered the problem with unbundling WTP and WTA. How do you ensure the accuracy/legitmacy of the WTA?  Russ Roberts can input that his WTA for Trump is a gazillion dollars. Tucker Carlson can input that his WTA for Clinton is $100 gazillion dollars.  Then what?

Consider an issue like abortion.  It either is, or isn't, legal. If WTP and WTA are unbundled, then what's to stop people from entering the maximum possible WTA? We can certainly limit the amount that everybody can enter to a million dollars.  But then everybody just puts a million dollars for their WTA. So it provides absolutely no useful/trustworthy/credible info.

When it comes to the legality of abortion, is it possible that there isn't a transaction that enhances welfare?  Nope.  Maximizing the welfare enhancement of the transaction depends on determining how much each side is willing to sacrifice.  The winning side will be the side that is willing to spend the most money, all of which will be given to the losing side.

No matter which system is used, it's a logical fact that one side is going to get its way.  Should it get its way for free?  This is the premise of voting.  But I'm pretty sure that this premise is fundamentally horrible and incredibly detrimental.  Everyone would immensely benefit if everyone could clearly see and know the cost of what they want.  Then, and only then, could they make adequately informed decisions about whether what they want is truly worth it.

Imagine that Elizabeth wants abortion to be illegal.  How badly does she want it?  Is she willing to sacrifice the opportunity to buy a pair of shoes, or a laptop, or a car, or a house?  What is she willing to exchange?

Markets work because they facilitate the comparison of value/importance/relevance.  Our desires greatly exceed our dollars so we have no choice but to prioritize.  This is how society’s limited resources are put to more, rather than less, valuable uses.  This is how we minimize the irrelevant uses of society’s limited resources.

I take it as a fact that people really don’t appreciate the comparison aspect of markets.  My proof is that so many places/spaces aren’t markets!  This means that people do not directly compare the value of so many different things, which means that so many of society's limited resources are irrelevantly used. 

You asked about how coasianism, specifically bundling WTP and WTA, would work when there are several presidential candidates.  In this case, I’m not sure if coasianism would be the best option.  Coincidentally, here’s what I recently posted on the Debate.org website…

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Thanks for responding to my argument. If you get a chance, check out the thread I posted in the economics forum.

My argument is that spending is always better than voting. Presidents should be chosen by spending rather than by voting. Here are three ways that this could be done...

1. coasian market design (CMD)
2. bee market design (BMD)
3. pragmatarian market design (PMD)

For CMD we will consider Clinton VS Trump. For a fixed amount of time, spenders would have the opportunity to spend as much money as they wanted on their preferred candidate. After the window of participation closed, the totals would be calculated and revealed. Whichever candidate had the biggest total would be the winner. Let's say that Trump was the winner. All the spenders for Clinton would receive a full refund. Plus, they'd proportionally receive all the money that had been spent for Trump. Unlike voting, CMD is a win-win situation. You either get your preferred candidate, or you get compensated.

BMD would be a better option if we wanted to choose the president from a larger list of candidates...

Bernie Sanders
Chris Christie
Darrell Castle
Donald Trump
Evan McMullin
Gary Johnson
Hillary Clinton
James Hedges
Jeb Bush
Jill Stein
Marco Rubio
Mimi Soltysik
Ted Cruz
Tom Hoefling
Rand Paul
Rocky De La Fuente

Spenders could use their donations to determine the best order of the candidates. Whichever candidate was at the top when the window of participation had closed would be the winner. The government would keep all the money. So BMD essentially kills two birds with one stone...

1. Valuating
2. Fundraising

With PMD, people would use their tax dollars to determine the best order of the candidates. The candidates would keep all the tax dollars that had been allocated to them.

Your concern with replacing voting with spending is that bias exists in the world. Let's say that right now everybody is biased against robot candidates. In this case, no matter whether we used voting or spending, a robot candidate would not be elected. The next decade 90% of the citizens are biased against robot candidates. If voting was used, it's definitely going to be tyranny of the biased majority and the robot candidate will not be elected. If we used spending though, there's some chance that the robot candidate will be elected.

It took over 200 years to elect our first black president. We still haven't had a woman president, or an (openly) gay president, or an (openly) atheist president, or... it's a long list. I really don't think that voting in any way, shape or form helps to overcome detrimental biases held by the majority of the citizens. Spending, on the other hand, would facilitate the elimination of detrimental biases.

Think about backpacking. Before you go backpacking you have to decide whether things you want to take are worth the effort of carrying them. Sure, you'd love to take a big bottle of Tequila, but is it worth the effort of carrying it? Knowing, considering and comparing the carrying costs/benefits of different things allows you to make more rational decisions. In the absence of knowing, or paying, the carrying costs... it's impossible for your carrying decisions to be maximally rational.

Replacing voting with spending would allow everyone to consider and compare the actual costs of the things they want. Then, and only then, will people make maximally rational decisions.

"As was noted in Chapter 3, expressions of malice and/or envy no less than expressions of altruism are cheaper in the voting booth than in the market. A German voter who in 1933 cast a ballot for Hitler was able to indulge his antisemitic sentiments at much less cost than she would have borne by organizing a pogrom." - Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision

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Earlier this year the Libertarian Party (LP) used a BMD to choose its convention theme…

$6,327.00 - I"m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 - Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 - Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 - Empowering the Individual
$395.00 - The Power of Principle
$150.00 - Future of Freedom
$135.00 - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 - Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 - Free Lives Matter
$42.00 - Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 - Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 - Taxation is Theft
$15.00 - Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 - All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 - Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 - Liberty Here and Now

This system could work just as well for choosing presidents.  I wonder how much money the government would raise?

Classtopia’s Communication Department uses a BMD for blog entries.  So far it has raised $30 dollars. 

Next month, as you already know, my epiphyte society plans on using a BMD for show entries.

It would be quite excellent if a BMD was also used for forum threads!  Econhub provides an exceptionally good opportunity to do so.  Not sure how much you know about it, but it was recently created in order to compete the Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) forum out of existence.  I wrote about it here.

The response to Econhub has been underwhelming, to say the least.  So far there are only 17 members.  It would really suck to let a brand new economics forum go to waste.  So we should really put it to good use.

If we created a BMD for Econhub, then the donated money could be used to draw the public’s attention to a page that listed the most important threads.  Hopefully this would result in more people joining the forum and substantially participating in the prioritization process.

I shared this idea on Econhub but the owner hasn't responded to it yet.  It would be nice to have him on board but it isn't essential.  A Google sheet would be used to store the data, which could be displayed on a webpage of our choice.  This is the page that we'd promote with the donations.

Maybe I'm a bit biased, but it really doesn't sound so crazy to pool our money in order to promote the best economic ideas.

If You Don't Own You...Then Who Does?

Update...decided to turn this into a survey after all...Self-Ownership Survey (SOS).

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Eh, this has been sitting in my drafts section for a while.  I would have liked to turn it into a survey... similar to my tax allocation survey...but other more pressing matters keep popping up so figured I'd just go ahead and post it.  I was also motivated to post it by a couple of relevant articles that were recently published.

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We all agree with the self-ownership principle to some degree. The question is...where do we draw the line?  Here are 10 arguments with regards to the self-ownership principle.  How many, if any, do you agree with?  How ideologically consistent are you?  In other words...where do you see yourself on the continuum ranging from pragmatism to dogmatism?

Abortion should be illegal - DNA allows us to differentiate between where your fist ends and somebody's nose begins. If you invite somebody onto your property it doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them. If somebody is forced onto your property it still doesn't give you the right to initiate violence against them.

Consensual slavery should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to partially or fully sell yourself.  You should have the right to sell your kidneys, your sex and your entire body. You should be able to sell yourself to anybody else for any amount of time as long as you fully agree to the terms of the contract.

Polygamy should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to enter into a marriage contract with as my people as you so choose.

Euthanasia should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to authorize other people to terminate your life.

Drugs should be legal - If you fully own yourself then you should be able to harm yourself in any way that you so choose.

There should be a licence to procreate - You should have the right to be raised by people who were willing to take, and able to pass, a test based on a Parenting for Dummies textbook.   It's a violation of your property rights to be raised by people who do not know the basic nutritional, health, safety, emotional, and educational needs of children.

Children of any age should be allowed to vote (children's suffrage) - Everybody should have the right, completely irrespective of all other factors, to try and protect their interests. By restricting any individual's right to try and protect their interests we are legitimizing the idea that one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests. If one person can truly know what's in another person's best interests then it's reasonable for congress to take our money and spend it in our best interests.

Campaign contributions should not be restricted - Everybody should have the right to try and protect their interests. By restricting somebody's right to try and protect their interests you are saying that you know for a fact what's in their best interests.  How would you respond if somebody told you that they know for a fact what's in your best interests?  Would you believe them?

Taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes (pragmatarianism) - We all have a debt to society but no two people have benefited from society in exactly the same way. Therefore, you are the only one that can truly know how you can best repay your debt to society. Voters should determine the functions of government and taxpayers should determine which functions to fund.

Taxes should be abolished (anarcho-capitalism) - Your property is an extension of yourself. Nobody has a right to take your property. Somebody stealing one penny from you is as morally wrong as somebody stealing your kidney.

Bonus 11th argument...

Business owners should be allowed to discriminate. - Your business is your property.  You should be able to do whatever you want with your property as long as your decisions do not violate the property rights of other people.  If other people disagree with your business practices then they can express their disapproval by engaging in ethical consumerism.  In essence, business owners should have the right to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose.  If they want to send customers and/or employees to their competitors then that is their prerogative.