OFF: Re: HW: Tour Shirts

[Paul Mather]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 04:56:33PM +0100, M Holmes wrote:
=> Woops, slight miscalculation in numbers and this should read:
=>
=> M Holmes writes:
=>
=> > Paul:
=>
=> > >Most individuals lack the
=> > > resources and breadth of knowledge in all areas to be able to
=> > > ascertain categorically whether or not they're being lied to.
=>
=> Sure, but most of the time we don't need to.  There's a good economic
=> argument that an election is just such a time: In Britain, the
=> difference between what the two parties propose as state spending is
=> around 2% of GDP.  That's about 20 billion quid.  Call it 40 million
=> adults in the UK and that's 500 quid per year each.  Let's be generous
=> and say that the state is 40% less efficient at using cash than private
=> industry in terms of spending on what the individual actually wants and
=> we get a total cost per annum of getting the vote wrong of 200 quid.

That seems to imply that people are only interested in or affected by
economic policy.  I don't buy that. :-)  Even were it true, the
percentage of GDP could be allocated very differently depending upon
the party.  For example, Party A could pour lots of money into the
military, prisons, and border patrols because they wanted to appear
"tough on law and order and weapons of mass destruction."  Party B, on
the other hand, might sink lots of money into hospitals and schools.
The net effect of that spending may differ dramatically in terms of
personal impact (especially if you're trying to afford prescriptions
and medical treatment).  Besides that, not many people spend their
money building nuclear weapons, so the fact that they could have done
it 40% more efficiently than the government is cold comfort.

The above also does not appear to factor in the impact of social
policy and potential legislation that may be introduced by Party A or
Party B in terms of personal freedoms; reinstating national service;
banning abortion; etc.  How many quid does that work out as per annum?

=> They have a 50% chance of just guessing the best way to vote and so
=> game-theoretically we can halve that cost to 100 quid, or 2 quid per
=> week.
=>
=> Call the average wage about 20K, or 400 Pounds per week, and that means
=> that anyone who spends more than 10 hours in a year, or 12 minutes per
=> week, even thinking about how to vote has pretty much wasted their time.
=> Even at minimum wage you'd only just over double it to say half an hour
=> per week, which is less than most people will spend reading a newspaper
=> anyway.

Even sticking purely in an economic vein, how does this amortise the
future cost of disastrous policies?  Say, for example, a leader is
voted in whose economic policies drive up the national deficit to
record levels such that ones own offspring will be hard pressed to pay
it down.  How does your short-term game-theoretic gamble account for
sustained future well-being?

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa