Monday, January 27, 2020

The romance and the news

It's election season and we see sides of human nature that are not pretty. Seeking votes, candidates make promises they cannot keep. Voters chose to suspend disbelief. Many seek to be on a winning team.

Americans (and others) enjoy prosperity that is out of all proportion to the other-worldliness of their politics. Davies writes: "People alive today, even the poor, are the luckiest people in human history." This is in spite of what happens in their politics and government. The markets (and the culture that supports them) must be formidable. McCloskey spells it out.

We vote with our wallets, with our feet, with our voices, our ballots, etc. Problems of voting with ballots have been well studied via a considerable body of public choice analysis. Yet, this approach remains beyond "mainstream" economics because it undermines so many "market failure" analyses. How many scholarly papers have posited an implausible model of "perfect" markets, found that perfect ("nirvana economics") is unlikely and proposed a policy fix?

Public choice notes the limitations of voting. Intensities of preference are ignored. Rational ignorance is expected. Voter turnout is low. Interest groups have an advantage and often win. We get large deficits, large bureaucracies, large cronyism, etc. Buchanan famously told reporters that his contribution was all about "politics without romance." Yet, there remain many romantics who expect that voting aggregates and transmits preferences.

Briefly compare voting for President to shopping. You get one vote every four years. You transmit how many personal preferences? Vote or nor? Vote for D or for R? Contribute money or not? Contribute to D or to R? Contribute time or not? Contribute time to D or to R.  I see between one and six choice points.

But how many household shopping trips per week?  This site says about 1.6. How many items purchased per trip? Let's say 10. How many aspects of each purchase matter? Let's s say price and familiarity and quantity/size. Roughly, 2,500 decisions per household per year.  There are probably many more. We're pretty good when thinking fast so all this is easily manageable. Sellers know the story and are incentivized to make it simple and manageable and even appealing. Go to a state liquor store (if you state has them) and quickly see the contrast.

We have a much better chance of making our preferences known (and counted) in the market than in our democracy. Not everyone votes (for obvious reasons) but those who do, enjoy the romance. I get that. But I also see/read the news.