I think that we need an open auction -- a free market -- for political decisions. It would be so much more efficient than all this democracy stuff. The marginal revenue product to the briber of the bribe (i.e., the price of the decision) would equal the money amount of the bribe, so that consumer surplus would be maximized. Similarly, the bribee would be paid the MRP of the bribe, maximizing the producer surplus. At 09:13 PM 10/14/98 -0700, you wrote: >Jim Devine worries about the low cost of spies; I worry about the low cost of >politicians. My brother tells me that his group contributed $5000 to Dan >Rostenkowski and lo and behold he changed an important provision in the tax >code. > >Suppose we had a minimum wage law for politicians on the take. > >As it stands, political bribes now often earn 100-fold returns. Suppose we made >it a felony for any politican to accept less than $100 million in bribes, then >politicans could still get rich but they would have to do fewer bad things to >get their money. > >Some might argue that this would be unfair to smaller bribers that could not >affort that much, but they can still probably hire local pols. > >-- >Michael Perelman >Economics Department >California State University >Chico, CA 95929 > >Tel. 530-898-5321 >E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
