Surveys: Voting VS Spending

Which is a better way to rank options... voting or spending?  In other words, which is better... democracy or markets?

Poll: 73% support bill protecting undocumented "DREAMers." pic.twitter.com/5dMcivgcQG

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 22, 2018

I felt compelled to tip! Have I been ‘nudged’ by Caffè Nero? #behavioralscience @rorysutherland pic.twitter.com/72Hy9IJJBc

— Chris Thurling (@ChrisThurling) January 11, 2018

It would be very helpful if you gave people the opportunity to use donations to help rank potential speakers. It would be a survey, but with spending instead of voting. https://t.co/idSS3I3awF Last year the @LPNational used this system to rank potential convention themes. pic.twitter.com/qbtZaEbqJQ

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 23, 2018

Scholarly papers are ranked by cheap signals (citations). Webpages are also ranked by cheap signals (links). Politicians/proposals/policies are also ranked by cheap signals (voting). Wouldn't it be a vastly bigger improvement to replace these cheap signals with costly signals?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 30, 2018

Part of science is evidence. Do you have any evidence that voting is better than spending at measuring satisfaction? https://t.co/BlwKvfUv4c

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) February 1, 2018

Where's the proof that voting is better than spending at ranking politicians?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 30, 2018

Who told you that voting is more useful than spending at measuring usefulness? https://t.co/BlwKvfUv4c

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 29, 2018

Recently I realized that democracy, capitalism and socialism are all about ranking options. Options are either ranked by voting, spending or committee. Do you think that scientists have ranked these three ranking systems?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 24, 2018

Please quote exactly where Buchanan said...

A. The optimal supply of public goods does *not* depend on people's true preferences.

...or...

B. Voting is more effective than spending at revealing people's true preferences.

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 22, 2018

Which is a more useful measure of usefulness... voting or spending?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) January 19, 2018

Do you have any evidence that voting is better than spending at measuring quality?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) February 3, 2018

Do you have any evidence that voting (a cheap signal) is better than spending (a costly signal) at measuring usefulness?

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) February 3, 2018

What's truly insane is that democracy gives unequally irrational people equal influence.

— Pragmatarian (@Pragmatarian) February 4, 2018

Markets: The Freedom To Reallocate Your Brainpower

Reply to reply: MMT = Moronic Monetary Theory

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So what????? we might not have enough defense to defend ourselves and we'd get killed! Do you understand that living is important? - James972

Of course I understand that living is important. You understand this as well. But what you don't understand is that our standard of living depends on how well our country utilizes all its brainpower.

Right now you think it's a good idea to prevent taxpayers from having the option to choose where their taxes go. This means that you think it's a good idea to prevent nearly all of our country's brainpower from being applied to public goods. You don't understand that blocking nearly all of our country's brainpower from the public sector is just as detrimental as it would be to block nearly all of our country's brainpower from the private sector.

Imagine that everybody on this forum was stranded on an island. Let's say that somehow you had the power to enslave all of us. If you did so, would your standard of living be better or worse? Of course it would be worse! Because by enslaving all of us you would essentially be wasting all of our brainpower. All of our significant activities would only reflect your brainpower. Our island society would only fully utilize one person's brain... your own. Maybe you would be fully utilizing our labor... but our brainpower, which is infinitely more valuable, would be entirely wasted. Our standard of living would reflect this.

Of course you object to slavery. But you object to it for moral reasons rather than for economic reasons. If you actually understood why slavery is economically stupid then you would understand why it's also economically stupid to prevent people from having the option to directly allocate their taxes.

I'm guessing that you support democracy. But are you seriously under the impression that voting fully utilizes everybody's brainpower? Do you think it takes just as much brainpower for you to decide who to vote for as it would take for you to decide how to spend your tax dollars?

To be clear... you can't utilize more than 100% of your brainpower. If you had the option to directly allocate your taxes... obviously you wouldn't be required to use 200% of your brainpower. You would simply have the option to decide how you wanted to allocate your brainpower between the private sector and the public sector. If you didn't want to allocate any of your brainpower to the public sector... then you would simply continue to allow congress to spend 100% of your taxes for you. If nobody chose the option to directly allocate any of their taxes... then the public sector wouldn't gain any brainpower.

Perhaps the closest real world situation occurred in 1978. This is when Deng Xiaoping began to gradually give foreigners the option to shop in China. Prior to 1978... nobody, not even the Chinese, had the option to shop in China. Right now, thanks to Deng Xiaoping, you have the option to shop in China's private sector. Right now you have the freedom to decide how you want to allocate your brainpower between our private sector and their private sector. We all have this same freedom. Do you think we benefit from having this freedom? I sure think so. Even though I don't allocate much, if any, of my own brainpower to shopping in China... my standard of living has definitely improved as a result of all the people who have allocated significant amounts of their brainpower to shopping in China.

Here we are allocating our brainpower to this forum. Are we better off as a result of having this option to do so? I sure think so.

The thing is... this website...

1. doesn't have a market
2. isn't a market

This website doesn't have a market because you don't have the option to spend your money on the threads and posts that you value. In other words, this website doesn't have a market because it doesn't facilitate micropayments. Should this website facilitate micropayments? Yes? No? Right now you don't have the option to spend your money on your preferred answer. Therefore, this website is not a market.

This website would be infinitely better if it had a market and it was a market. Why? Because it would be infinitely better at utilizing all our brainpower. But it's not entirely problematic that this website doesn't have a market and it isn't a market. Because, as soon as somebody does create a website that has a market and/or is a market... then we are entirely free to leave this website and participate on the website that does a better job of utilizing the brainpower of all its members.

The fact that this website is in a market means that we are entirely free to reallocate our brainpower as soon as we deem it beneficial to do so.   If you understand the benefit of people being free to reallocate their brainpower... then you should be able to understand the benefit of giving people the option to reallocate their brainpower to the public sector.

Need Beta Testers For Micropayments Forum

Forum post: Need Beta Testers For Micropayments Forum

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I finished creating a very basic, no frills, micropayments forum...

So far this is the most valuable cat photo on the forum. In the upper right hand of the page, below my username, is my balance... $9.35. This is the amount of money that's in my wallet. Right beneath the signature section is where I've placed the post's total value and the coins buttons. The total amount of money that's been allocated to this post is $0.57 cents. Any member can click on any of the fancy coins and some ajax magical goodness will take place.

In order to create this very basic ajax valuing system, these are the pages that I modified...

overall_header.html (1 line of code)
navbar_header.html (~2 lines of code)
viewtopic.php (~ 5 lines of code)
overall_footer.html (~ 1/4 page of code)
viewtopic_body.html (~ 1/2 page of code)

... and here's a new page...

ajax_value.php (~ 1 page of code)

To give credit where credit is due... this "ajax like" code was quite helpful.

The code that I myself wrote is a trainwreck. I'm sure it's all types of wrong, and in the wrong places... so there's plenty of room for improvement.

I could have spent many more days, weeks, months and years improving and developing the functionality and features of this micropayments forum... but that would have defeated the very purpose of facilitating monetary feedback. :D

So right now I'm looking for beta testers! The first 50 will get a dollar in their wallet. Just PM me your username and I'll share the link with you. Then you can share your most valuable cat photos and we'll be able to see who's cat photo is truly the most valuable! And/or we can have some serious discussion about the potential benefits/problems of facilitating micropayments.

If there are any features/functionality that you'd like added...then you could post your suggestion in the feedback forum. It's probably a good idea to only have one suggestion per post. That way, if/when people allocate money to your post... we can be sure which suggestion it is that they value.

Yes, you can allocate money to your own posts. When you do so though, the money won't go back into your wallet. Basically you're "boosting" your own post. Kinda like on facebook. But with this forum... everybody and anybody can also help boost your post. It's crowd boosting/amplifying. Every post can be crowd sponsored.

If you haven't seen it, here's my first topic on the topic... Micropayments For Threads?

Let me know if you have any questions!

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Forum post: Micropayments for communities?

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Hi everybody!

I participate in many online communities and I recently decided to start one of my own.  It's a phpbb forum.

The reason that I started my own community is because I really love the idea of micropayments.  I shared the idea with a few different communities and there wasn't much interest.  According to a poll that I included in one forum, around 70% of the community was against the idea.

So a few days ago I shelled out $60 bucks for some hosting and modified the phpbb code to facilitate micropayments.  And now I have a very basic, but functional, micropayments forum.  With one click you can give a post a nickle... which, via ajax, goes directly into the poster's "wallet".  It's entirely free, there's absolutely no fees or cost of any kind.  The only time I get any money is if you allocate money to your own posts.  Because, it wouldn't make sense for the money to go back into your wallet!

I have a ton of questions... but my main question is... would any of you be interested in being a beta tester?

Now, I think it's possible that this is coming off as promotional.  But, like I said, I *really* love the idea of micropayments.  The purpose of my micropayments forum is solely to (hopefully) prove to other online communities that micropayments are a really good idea.

Take this community for example.  Regardless of how much time/effort/thought you put into your reply... no matter how much I value your reply... all this website allows me to give you in return is a vote.  The majority of you perceive that this system is perfectly adequate.  Why?  Because there's an abundance of good answers.  Plenty of people are happy to freely contribute... so why mess with something that works?

Right now you're free to allocate 1 hour, or 10 hours, or 100 hours replying to this question.  You can freely allocate as much of your time to me as you want.  But I can't freely allocate my nickle to you?  If time is money then money is time.

Votes on this website are used to determine the value/rank of an answer.  However, in economics, value is a function of sacrifice.  Given that a vote doesn't even cost a penny... there's no sacrifice!  Hence... the "best" answers on this website aren't the most valuable... they are the most popular.  Opinion polls are interesting, and useful, but the fact of the matter is that actions (spending) speaks louder than words (voting).

I might be wrong though! But if you're unfamiliar with the term "contingent valuation" then you haven't studied the topic as much as I have. So maybe I'm not wrong.

If I'm not wrong, then this would eliminate the need for displaying ads on your website.  Every post would be an ad.  Whenever you allocated a penny to somebody's post you would be helping to promote their thoughts.  No "results" would be organic... they'd all be (crowd)sponsored.

The first 50 beta testers will receive one dollar in their wallet.  If you decide to be a beta tester, and you see the potential of facilitating micropayments, then you can share the idea with your own community.  All the phpbb files that I modified will be freely available. It adds up to around 2 pages of code.

If you're interested in being a beta tester... send me a PM either here or over at the phpbb community... Micropayments For Threads?

Public Goods vs Private Goods

It is, of course, not desirable that anything should be done by funds derived from compulsory taxation, which is already sufficiently well done by individual liberality. - J.S. Mill

Thus, considered in themselves, in their own nature, in their normal state, and apart from all abuses, public services are, like private services, purely and simply acts of exchange. - Bastiat, Private and Public Services

The only difference between public goods and private goods is that people can free-ride off the contributions that others make to public goods.  To fix that problem we simply force people to pay taxes. Once we force people to pay taxes then public goods become in essence no different than private goods.

We've long since established that markets are more effective than planners at efficiently allocating private goods.  For example, some of the countries that still have planned economies are...Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, and Myanmar.  So if planners fail at allocating private goods...and public goods are not essentially different than private goods...then why do we still allow planners (aka congress) to allocate public goods?

The solution is simply to allow taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes among the various government organizations.  For example, at anytime throughout the year you could visit the Environmental Protection Agency website and directly submit a payment.

This system, also known as tax choice, would allow taxpayers to consider the opportunity costs of their allocation decisions.  The result would be a far more efficient allocation of public funds.

For those not familiar with the economic term..."opportunity cost" refers to how much of one good somebody would be willing to forgo in order to gain more of another good. For example, how much public education would you be willing to sacrifice for a secure border? How much defense would you be willing to sacrifice for improved infrastructure?  Your opportunity cost decisions allow everything you know ("partial knowledge") and value to help determine how society's limited resources are used.

In each of the following quotes I underlined the sections that are relevant to the concept of opportunity cost.

Nevertheless, the classic solution to the problem of underprovision of public goods has been government funding - through compulsory taxation - and government production of the good or service in question. Although this may substantially alleviate the problem of numerous free-riders that refuse to pay for the benefits they receive, it should be noted that the policy process does not provide any very plausible method for determining what the optimal or best level of provision of a public good actually is. When it is impossible to observe what individuals are willing to give up in order to get the public good, how can policymakers access how urgently they really want more or less of it, given the other possible uses of their money? There is a whole economic literature dealing with the willingness-to-pay methods and contingent valuation techniques to try and divine such preference in the absence of a market price doing so, but even the most optimistic proponents of such devices tend to concede that public goods will still most likely be underprovided or overprovided under government stewardship. - Patricia Kennett, Governance, globalization and public policy

The working out of financial arrangements between collective consumption units and production units is one of the most difficult problems faced by entrepreneurs in the public economy. Without market prices and market transactions, the act of paying for a good generally occurs at a time and place far from the act of consuming the good: individual costs are widely separated from individual benefits. Yet a principle of fiscal equivalence--that those receiving the benefits from a service pay the costs for that service--must apply in the public economy just as it applies in a market economy. Costs must be proportioned to benefits if people are to have any sense of economic reality. Otherwise beneficiaries may assume that public goods are free goods, that money in the public treasury is "the government's money," and that no opportunities are foregone in spending that money. When this happens the foundations of a democratic society are threatened. The alternative is to adhere as closely as possible to the principle of fiscal equivalence and to proportion taxes as closely as possible to benefits received. - Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom, Public Goods and Public Choices (PDF)