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If 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 everyon
by noqc 3y ago
If 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.