3 ms·
The incentive structures of those funding the university's research department. In many cases, state governments, who themselves are run by congresspeople respo
by kmeisthax 3y ago
The incentive structures of those funding the university's research department. In many cases, state governments, who themselves are run by congresspeople responding to the incentive structures set out by voters. Those voters are themselves tactically voting to get the best possible outcome in response to the incentive structures set out by voting systems. And the people who decide what the voting system is are the congresspeople they're voting in, who have an incentive to keep the system as it is so they can stay in power.
In other words, it's incentives all the way down. At the national level, there are other factors that dilute the influence of this infinite regression of incentives, such as geopolitics, war, etc. But for states the only real factor that shines through - the green tint in our infinity mirror - is "how much money do we want to spend on secondary education" and the answer is invariably "less than last year" and "can we find someone else to pay for it?"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- noqc 3y agoIf coal is equally distributed among all people, then the utility to each person for burning their coal is more than offset by the (negative) utility of everyone burning their coal. Voting is what allows us to overcome this sort of prisoner's dilemma, and prevents coal from being burned when it hurts society in aggregate to do so. If instead, you adopt a system where how much you own decides your voting power, then when the coal gets concentrated enough, it doesn't matter how bad it is for society, that coal will get burned, because the voting power is concentrated among the people who benefit from it the most. Saying voting is the source of this incentive structure is ignorant.
- kmeisthax 3y agoThe voting I'm referring to is the actual democratic system of each state government that funds the schools, not the shareholder """democracy""" of one share one vote.
- noqc 3y agoI agree, that's why I called it ignorant.
- jujube3 3y agoIn other words, the government cannot do bad things, only private companies can do bad things. A very enlightened point of view. Great that you corrected the people with actual experience.
- noqc 3y agoThose are indeed other words. I said that it's incorrect to describe the bad things the government does as being driven by "voters acting tactically". It's not even rational to vote. Changing what I said so that you can disagree with it more easily is also dishonest.
- jujube3 3y agoVoters can certainly be selfish, in the sense of wanting something that might conflict with the greater good. For example, I might not want a new sewage treatment plant in my neighborhood, even if that is what the greater metropolitan area needs. I might want NASA to keep open a local office even if that interferes with efficiency. And there's nothing irrational about voting. Maybe it is irrational to spend a lot of time reading about obscure candidates for assistant deputy dogcatcher, but you can just leave those choices blank if you want, and just vote on the things where you already have a strong opinion.