Re: The Median Voter Theorem and Adoption Law
I suspect interracial adoption may have an asymmetry in the intensity of public opinion. Those of us who feel that interracial adoption is no big deal are probably less passionate than those who are troubled by it. James
Re: Little Issues "Building Up"
fabio guillermo rojas wrote: > You are misinterpreting the function of these little issues. > Little issues don't "build up". Little issues tend to be signals to > certain constituencies. Well, the Contract with America was a set of 10 proposals, each supported by something like 70 percent of voters (at the time and for a significant period of time before 1994) that the Democrats refused to enact. I would say that it is often the case that when a new party comes to power after a long period of opposition, there are usually quite a lot of popular reforms that they can enact that have "built up" over time. James
Re: Survivor - game theory
The players on "Survivor" may not have been smart enough, but the players on "The Price is Right" pursue the correct strategy all the time (bids of $1 if they think everyone has overbid or bids of $1 higher than the highest bid if they think everyone has underbid.) James
Credit scoring and insurance premiums
I just saw an article in Business Week discussing the growing use of credit scores over the past couple years to determine auto and homeowners' insurance premiums. This practice has become controversial because it has sometimes meant hefty premium increases for people who don't seem to be particularly bad insurance risks. Does anyone on this list have info/opinions on this issue? Many thanks, James Haney
Monopoly justice vs free market justice
> > I don't know about Eric, but I definitely think that > there would be less murders if there were no laws against them, > and similarly for robbery, rape, fraud, etc. > Crimes would instead be settled in civil courts, > and murderers would be greatly indebted to the heirs, > and the fact of criminals paying back their debt > would make the whole process economically efficient. > > [Anarchocapitalist utopia omitted...] > I like anarchocapitalism as much as the next guy, but this thread seems tendentious to me. If private individuals or organizations have a right to sue you for murdering one of their relatives or life insurance customers or whatever, that makes murder _de facto_ against the law. If the Texas State Legislature were to remove murder laws from the statute books WHILE DOING NOTHING ELSE, there would almost certainly be an increase in killings. Sure, giving victims the right to choose who they trust to investigate crimes committed against them would probably lead to fewer miscarriages of justice a la JonBenet Ramsey or O.J. Simpson. (If I don't think my small-town police department is up to the task, I immediately call an agency that I know can do the job properly.) But removing government penalties against murder does not seem like the smartest first step toward a free-market legal system. How did a debate about the best way to deal with the problem of spam turn into this? Respectfully, James Haney
Re: privatize parking spaces - market failure?
I've been sitting back on this, but now I have to enter the debate... A fully floating tariff for parking meters that is entirely based on reducing congestion may be "efficient", but it is a false efficiency. People want to have a general idea when they get in their car to go somewhere as to how much it will cost to park. Refusing to provide this information to customers is not efficient. It's true that with a preannounced price schedule, you cannot completely eliminate congestion, but the goal should not be to eliminate congestion but to achieve the optimal level of congestion. Occasional congestion as a result of unforeseen circumstances is no big deal; it is regular, predictable congestion that we should be trying to eliminate. (This goes for toll roads, too.) I think some of the more interesting possibilities with privatized parking spaces would be: 1) The possibility of local business to validate (i.e., provide discounts for) the parking of customers who park on their street. 2) A potential reduction in NIMBY-ism. When I was living in San Antonio, Texas, they were in the process of designing the Alamodome. There was a big outcry among residents near where that building was going to be located that the stadium was not building enough parking spaces. I met a guy involved in the project who said, "Ideally, we shouldn't build ANY parking because then people would automatically look for somewhere else to park instead of circling around an already full parking lot." The residents didn't like the idea of their neighborhoods being regularly invaded by large numbers of basketball fans (some of whom would likely be inebriated). Well, if the neighborhoods owned the parking meters and could charge, say $20/hour whenever the Spurs played, they might be a little less upset about all this. Respectfully, James Haney
Re: privatize parking spaces - market failure?
Robin Hanson wrote: >Why not let those who want to trade parking futures? This is an interesting, clever suggestion, but it still strikes me as a bit Rube Goldberg-ish. I have a feeling that regardless of the state of current or future technology, a preannounced, fixed (but occasionally modified) tariff of parking rates that is set at the proper level will bring almost as much gain in efficiency as a variable tariff but at a significantly lower social cost (especially when search costs and customer frustration are considered). After all, if variable pricing were such a wonderful idea, wouldn't supermarkets charge $20/gallon for milk whenever the TV weatherman said that a blizzard was coming? I'm not convinced that the technology to make a variable tariff economically optimal really exists yet (or if it exists it's not ready for prime time). It's not enough to have meters that can set real-time efficient prices; it's also necessary to have some convenient way for customers to find out what those prices are at any moment (presumably an Internet connection in your car or something equivalent). Otherwise, you wind up driving around stopping at parking spaces to look at the fare and then having to go somewhere else and repeat the process until you find a space that costs a price you're willing to pay, and all the while you curse the person who thought up this crazy parking system that has all sorts of empty parking spaces that you can't use. I suspect that parking meter owners would find it more profitable to have a preannounced tariff. This wireless information service in your car will cost money, which will lower the money that customers can spend in parking meters. A fixed tariff would allow the owners to capture more of the social surplus. Also, fewer customers would be alienated into never coming back. Respectfully, James Haney
Re: general motors
If being a detailer is primarily about tracing small drawings off a big drawing, couldn't it be automated somehow? That might allow the Design Engineer to take full responsibility without spending too much time on gruntwork. --James
Re: Basketball Puzzle
Maybe players think that a minimum age restriction would set a precedent allowing for a maximum age restriction down the line. --James Haney
1970s global slowdown
I think someone has to mention the nutty supply-side argument on this one. The slowdown in economic growth seems to have coincided with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary system and the US abandonment of the gold standard. Correlation does not prove causation, of course. What do the rest of you think? Respectfully, James Haney
Childrearing loans
Now that the toilet wars have died down,... Jean-Marie Baland (?) and James A. Robinson published an article in 2000 in which they suggested that a good way to reduce child labor would be to let parents borrow against their children's future income. Has there been anything else written on this subject since then? I was thinking that a similar approach could address falling birth rates (if it's something that needs to be addressed). If children could be self-financing, presumably parents would have more of them. "Childrearing loans" could make it easier for home-schooling or for one parent to stay home or for a married couple to be able to start having children earlier, etc. Could it be that a profitable market in childrearing loans might dramatically reduce the need for a social safety net? So, I was wondering what other armchair-ers think about this. If it's a good idea, what are the obstacles preventing it from being implemented? If it's a bad idea, why? Thanks for any consideration you give to this topic, James
Index mutual funds
If I want to buy shares in the 500 or so companies on the S&P 500, I'll be looking at commissions of at least $3000, right (unless I have a commissionless trading account, which requires a minimum balance of $500,000 or so)? If I hold those stocks for 20 years without ever rebalancing, that's $150/year. $150 divided by .2% is $75,000. What if I don't happen to have $75,000? Should I not invest in stocks at all until I've raised that much money just so I can save on commissions and fees? If I buy 10 stocks and hold them for 20 years, I might pay less in commissions and management fees, but I'm much less diversified, right? There is definitely a point at which mutual funds become less cost-effective than buying individual stocks, but I'm pretty certain you need to have at least $1 million dollars lying around in your stock portfolio for that to be true. I've read in the Wall Street Journal that exchange-traded funds are a better deal than index mutual funds if you have $30,000. If you are able to accumulate $30,000 in cash every month, then mutual funds don't make sense. (That implies a disposable income of at least $360,000 a year). At lower amounts, mutual funds are by far the best choice for convenience, cost, and diversification. Are there any flaws in my reasoning here? James
Et tu, Armchair?
I just had to endure an evolution/religion flame war on the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas mailing list (the moderator had to shut down the list to restore civility), and now it's spread to Armchair. Can't we all just get along? James
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
Sen. Robert Torricelli's Republican challenger has apparently decided to make the Torch's support for the latest farm bill an issue in this campaign, judging by this press release they put out after Torricelli apologized for his ethics violations. --James - My fellow New Jerseyans, I've let you down. I never should have accepted illegal gifts from a campaign contributor, nor acted as his Ambassador to foreign governments, nor denied ever doing anything at any time to betray the trust you placed in me. And I'm sorry. While we're at it, I never should have demanded that the CIA handcuff its field agents and make it tougher for them to penetrate foreign terrorist cells. And when virtually every intelligence professional said the CIA should rescind that policy, I should have agreed with them, rather than continuing to defend it. And I'm sorry. I never should have introduced legislation to raise the cost of prescription drugs by $11 BILLION in exchange for a measly $50,000 soft-money contribution to a campaign committee I controlled. I never should have voted for a $191 BILLION farm subsidies bill that will cost New Jersey households $4400 every year in higher taxes, just because I coveted $100,000 from out-of-state agribusinesses. And I never should have voted to keep toxic nuclear waste right here in our backyards, just because I lusted for $200,000 from Nevada special interests desperate to keep it out of THEIR state. And I'm sorry. My fellow New Jerseyans, there's a lot more I need to apologize for. But I've only got sixty seconds in this ad, and there's only so much special interest money I can grab. So for now, I'll leave you with this thought: next week, to erase any lingering doubts, I'm going to take the lie detector test recommended by my former colleague, Senator Lautenberg. Stay tuned.
"anti-Semitic"
Queen Anne's lace isn't really lace and doesn't really belong to Queen Anne. Sometimes when you put two words together their meanings change. The word "Semitic" may have a specific meaning. The prefix "anti" may have a specific meaning, but the word "anti-Semitic" means "anti-Jewish". There's nothing clever or consciousness-raising about quibbling with the semantics or etymology of this word. It means what it means. Get over it. --James
Re: The Popularity of Nonprice Rationing
I think there's also a reluctance to make the transition to price rationing. Do I want my water bill to suddenly quadruple because an economist says it's a good idea? And if prices are being voted on by politicians instead of being set by market firms, voters are inevitably going to be skeptical of the need for raising prices. --James
Re: What is predatrory lending ?
"Sub-prime" interest rates are actually considerably higher than "prime" interest rates. Sub-prime refers to the creditworthiness of the borrowers. As for predatory lending in general, I will defer to others. --James
