@cshentrup it does! i appreciate your making an effort, even if it's only a matter of simulation. 🙂
@cshentrup it's nice to have a point of agreement! though i'll still prefer we not call people morons, some i might think highly of, some i might think less of, but regardless.
@cshentrup dude i've been writing in favor of UBI like forever. i'd prefer an income-tax financed UBI than say a VAT funded UBI, because i think compressing the income and wealth distribution is socially efficient. but almost UBI, however funded or not, is going to be great for the poor. importantly, we want it to be good for the middle class too.
@cshentrup the distinction between Kaldor-Hicks and the Pareto criterion is simply that the Pareto criterion requires the redistribution that would leave everyone better off, while Kaldor-Hicks only requires that such a redistribution would exist, regardless of whether it actually occurs.
@cshentrup if you actually redistribute it's coherent, but then it's just Pareto, not Kaldo-Hicks (potential Pareto)
@cshentrup kaldor-hicks efficiency is incoherent. it doesn't define an ordering. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5212.html
@cshentrup it's good you're acknowledging the conflict and doing your best to resolve it in a prosocial way.
@cshentrup i think income taxes at high levels are super efficient, because i think the negative externalities of concentrated wealth and income on a liberal democratic society are at least as noxious as the negative externalities of land rent.
@cshentrup there are lots of policies that would benefit more than 70% of the population that 70% of the population don't meaningfully support. a UBI financed by an income tax increment, which i think you don't favor, could be set so that more than 70% come out net ahead. that's not on its own dispositive, politically or as a matter of policy.
@cshentrup the thing about Nash Equilibria is that in the most common case, they are not unique. almost anything can be a Nash Equilibrium, under the right circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_theorem_(game_theory)
@cshentrup i think you'll find people who identify as owners of valuable land will be unenthusiastic about the policy, and they'll have some success convincing lots of others! (i'd be for it!)
if you don't regulate to prevent it, in many contexts the form of "merit" that will be selected for is organized viciousness.
[tech notebook entry] Taking control of podcasts via RSS https://tech.interfluidity.com/2023/09/17/taking-control-of-podcasts-via-rss/index.html
@cshentrup have a wonderful evening! some time has passed.
@cshentrup you really should join an economics department. all that time i spent playing with CARA / CRRA / DARA utility functions, described as reflecting different kinds of risk aversion. i'm open to its all be less than worthwhile, but i wonder what you'd substitute for it!
@cshentrup i'm glad to be informed, and the harsanyian / rawlsian /shentrupian thought experiment is a fine one, but it has been my view for a long time that that social-welfare-function-style "utilitarianism" is a worthy exercise despite incomparable interpersonal utility. our difference is that i recognize the result of such exercise as inherently reflecting the values of the exercisor, and you think it can reflect scientific truth only a fool could deny, regardless of values.
@cshentrup I find this discussion not so informative. But you are not an idiot, and I won't call you one.
@cshentrup there is a 100% chance you lost 0.5M in expectation, a 50% chance you lost 2M in fact, under your scenario. it's not a mere matter of declining marginal utility. under some functions — with declining marginal utility — a very wealthy person takes that bet. Under others they do not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion
@cshentrup there's a scientific, values-free, incontestable empirical claim.
@cshentrup if you say so. again, since we don't find one another's claims persuasive in general — rightly or wrongly i am far from persuaded! — i'm unlikely to be persuaded of your uncharitable characterizations either. whatever you declare must be truth and fact.
@cshentrup economists use expectation over Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions ("expected utility") to characterize risk preferences. lots of people would take a guarantee of 1M over a 50% chance of 3M, suggesting they are risk averse. the fact people are willing to forego in expectation 0.5M is an interesting observation about actual human preferences. it's hard to express that without saying that, over this range, the person who chooses 1M prefers certainty or lack of risk.