Diversity VS Biodiversity

[Xerographica]

I come to allocate my taxes, and I see that the funding for mosquito spray is less than I think that it should be. How do I react? I could allocate my taxes to the spray. But if I do that, I'll have less taxes to allocate to other things that I want. Even if I perceive that the spray is the most important thing, there might be less important things that benefit me more narrowly. Eg, I work for the military in a society where only 75% of people support the military but 100% support the mosquito spray.
The BEST option for me, if I'm exercising some rational self interest, is to allocate my taxes to the military, and wait for someone else to allocate their taxes to the mosquito spray. I free ride.
Yet the thing is that EVERYONE has the same best option. It's always better to fund a more narrowly beneficial product and get someone else to fund the more broad products that you still want.

Everyone has the same best option? Everyone's best option is the military? Everyone's best option is this thread? Voila! Look how crowded it is?!

If everyone had the same best option then allowing congress to spend everyone's money would be fine. Congress's best option would be the same as everyone's best option. And we might as well give all our money to congress.

Right now there's a big bowl of watermelon cubes sitting right next to my laptop. I didn't put it there... but there it is. Am I eating the watermelon? Nope. It's just sitting there... uneaten. And here I am typing on this laptop. Am I not eating the watermelon because I hate it? Nope. Watermelon is my favorite fruit. I love it. Yet, here I am typing to you. Do I love you more than I love watermelon? I hate to admit it... but yeah. At this given point in time... I love you more than I love watermelon. I've already said it once so I might as well say it again... I love you more than I love watermelon.

I *heart* you > I *heart* watermelon

Will this always be true though? No. Right now I'm too full to eat watermelon. So what's my valuation of watermelon right now? It's zero. This means that I wouldn't enjoy eating it right now.

People's valuations are so fluid and dynamic because life is fluid and dynamic. And people's allocations follow from their valuations. Yet, here you are saying that everyone has the same best option. It's as if we live on entirely different planets. Or different dimensions. The people in your dimension only have one facet. The people in my dimension are multifaceted. The people in your dimension are all the same. The people in my dimension are all different. The people in your dimension can be represented. The people in my dimension can't be represented.

The thing is... we really don't live in different dimensions. Or different planets. We both live on the same planet so it's so bizarre that you think that people can be represented.

When you go to the grocery store... do people all have the same things in their shopping carts? Would people notice if you switched their shopping carts? Of course they'd notice if you switched their shopping carts because they have different things in their shopping carts. And people have different things in their shopping carts because people are all different.

Yet, somehow, if people could shop in the public sector... they'd all have the same best option. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our planet isn't better as a result of your efforts to keep diversity out of the public sector. In fact, it's much much much worse.

[Galloism]

Often, yes. The most rational thing is usually to find some way of directly paying yourself through the system (the "film your own movie" approach, as it were), but failing that communicating a lowering of the cost of participating is likely rational.

It's rational for me to try and film a movie so that I can pay myself $10 dollars per month? Netflix would still choose its content.

What incentive does Netflix have to pay people to filter out bullshit content? In this theory of how Netflix operates, it costs them nothing to get content - they're simply acting as an intermediary. I'd set up a server box you could upload servers to and it would disseminate across the network and save me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Oh wait. No. Let's not set those aside. You haven't addressed any of them, and you just keep reasserting "but it works like this" when it so plainly doesn't.

You said, "Oh noes, the division of labor! There are so many public goods! However shall people study each and every public good and become an expert on all of them????! Where will they find the time!!??? They'll have to quit their day jobs!!! Oh the humanity.... and the horror... and the humanity... and the horror!!!!"

I said, "Get a clue. There are far more goods in the private sector and a decentralized system works a lot better for all these goods than the centralized system would."

One of the economists you cited pointed out that the product cost conveys expert information from the experts who PRODUCE goods to the lay person who consumes them. That's the only reason it works in the private sector. Cost signalling is very important to the functioning of a system.

You want to remove it.

[Maqo]

I come to allocate my taxes, and I see that the funding for mosquito spray is less than I think that it should be. How do I react? I could allocate my taxes to the spray. But if I do that, I'll have less taxes to allocate to other things that I want. Even if I perceive that the spray is the most important thing, there might be less important things that benefit me more narrowly. Eg, I work for the military in a society where only 75% of people support the military but 100% support the mosquito spray.
The BEST option for me, if I'm exercising some rational self interest, is to allocate my taxes to the military, and wait for someone else to allocate their taxes to the mosquito spray. I free ride.
Yet the thing is that EVERYONE has the same best option. It's always better to fund a more narrowly beneficial product and get someone else to fund the more broad products that you still want.

Everyone has the same best option? Everyone's best option is the military? Everyone's best option is this thread? Voila! Look how crowded it is?!

You misunderstood, AND missed the point at the same time!

Everyone's "best option", their best course of action is to fund something other than mosquito spray. It might be military, healthcare, whatever. The point is that any time anyone has the choice to allocate taxes, even if they feel like mosquito spray is the most beneficial thing for them, they have the incentive to not allocate to mosquito spray and instead allocate to whatever it is that is more narrowly beneficial. According to your theory, this hides their value signal, which is bad.

[Xerographica]

It's rational for me to try and film a movie so that I can pay myself $10 dollars per month? Netflix would still choose its content.

What incentive does Netflix have to pay people to filter out bullshit content? In this theory of how Netflix operates, it costs them nothing to get content - they're simply acting as an intermediary. I'd set up a server box you could upload servers to and it would disseminate across the network and save me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So you'd simply film your bullshit movie and then send it to Netflix? They'd watch it and realize it was bullshit but serve it to their subscribers anyways? Because... subscribers love bullshit and Netflix wants to be just like Youtube?

You said, "Oh noes, the division of labor! There are so many public goods! However shall people study each and every public good and become an expert on all of them????! Where will they find the time!!??? They'll have to quit their day jobs!!! Oh the humanity.... and the horror... and the humanity... and the horror!!!!"

I said, "Get a clue. There are far more goods in the private sector and a decentralized system works a lot better for all these goods than the centralized system would."

One of the economists you cited pointed out that the product cost conveys expert information from the experts who PRODUCE goods to the lay person who consumes them. That's the only reason it works in the private sector. Cost signalling is very important to the functioning of a system.

You want to remove it.

Where did I say that I want to remove it? If we implemented pragmatarianism... then we'd have a market in the private sector and a market in the public sector. Both sectors would have value signals. But their value signals could not possibly be equally accurate. I'm pretty sure that the value signals in the public market will be more accurate than the value signals in the private market. I think enough people will realize this and the tax rate would increase... the public sector would expand and the private sector would contract.

There's absolutely no need for me to remove anything. It will be up to each and every spender to decide for themselves whether they are better served by producers in the private sector or by producers in the public sector. And given that spenders will be more honest with producers in the public sector... producers in the public sector will do a better job of serving spenders. As a result, spenders will want more and more producers in the public market and less and less producers in the private market.

Imagine that Netflix implemented the pragmatarian model and Youtube facilitated micropayments. Are you with me? Netflix subscribers could use their $10 dollars per month to communicate their valuation of the content. Youtube users, on the other hand, wouldn't be subscribers... but they would have the option to use their voluntary micropayments to communicate their valuation of the content.

Clearly these are two very different models. They would both have value signals... but Netflix would be the pragmatarian model while Youtube would be the voluntary model. Would their value signals be equally accurate?

[Xerographica]

Everyone has the same best option? Everyone's best option is the military? Everyone's best option is this thread? Voila! Look how crowded it is?!

You misunderstood, AND missed the point at the same time!

Everyone's "best option", their best course of action is to fund something other than mosquito spray. It might be military, healthcare, whatever. The point is that any time anyone has the choice to allocate taxes, even if they feel like mosquito spray is the most beneficial thing for them, they have the incentive to not allocate to mosquito spray and instead allocate to whatever it is that is more narrowly beneficial. According to your theory, this hides their value signal, which is bad.

Samantha would benefit from mosquito spray but she allocates her taxes to biodiversity conservation instead. Therefore, she's hiding her value signal? Because... she actually hates biodiversity conservation?

According to Samantha's allocations...

mosquito spray < biodiversity conservation

But according to you, Samantha's true valuation is...

mosquito spray > biodiversity conservation

And I'm supposed to believe your words rather than her actions? Because... you're her boyfriend? Or... you're a congressperson and you're omniscient?

Go find a congressperson and ask them what your preferences are. Ask them what your priorities are. Tell me how close their guesses are to your true preferences/priorities.

Are you going to do this? Of course not. Not once in the entire time that we've debated have you even mentioned your congressperson by name. I'd be surprised if you even know who your representative is. And even if you did know who your representative was... you're certainly not going to get the chance to chat with them in person. Or even over the phone. And there's no way in hell that your congressperson is going to personally read your e-mail. But I could be wrong. Feel free to e-mail your congressperson and tell them to guess what your preferences are. Let us know what their response is.

[Galloism]

What incentive does Netflix have to pay people to filter out bullshit content? In this theory of how Netflix operates, it costs them nothing to get content - they're simply acting as an intermediary. I'd set up a server box you could upload servers to and it would disseminate across the network and save me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So you'd simply film your bullshit movie and then send it to Netflix? They'd watch it and realize it was bullshit but serve it to their subscribers anyways?

Why pay people to watch it?

One of the economists you cited pointed out that the product cost conveys expert information from the experts who PRODUCE goods to the lay person who consumes them. That's the only reason it works in the private sector. Cost signalling is very important to the functioning of a system.

You want to remove it.

Where did I say that I want to remove it? If we implemented pragmatarianism... then we'd have a market in the private sector and a market in the public sector.

And the market in the public sector, as you have theorized it, has NO COST SIGNALS.

Cost signals are a signal where the producer says "you payment must be this tall for you to ride."

You want to REMOVE cost signals.

Netflix, as you've theorized it, has successfully removed the cost signals from its content producers. The content producer no longer communicate cost signals to netflix.

You are trying to REMOVE information from the system.

[The Tofu Islands]

I'm going to be away from my computer for the next couple of weeks, so this will probably be my last post here for a while.

There aren't a lot of options here.

But you aren't showing anything about your system.

I guess this is probably why you started referring to tax choice as "inclusive valuation", since now you seem to have even more leeway to prove things irrelevant to the actual point at hand.

Inclusive valuation is a term you constructed, as far as I can tell, earlier this thread and introduced as a way of describing tax choice. I have, for reasons of my own sanity, been mentally considering the two equivalent.

LOL... you might take another look at the other two options.

What?

The "evidence" is the free-rider problem. You either think that the free-rider problem is... or isn't... a real problem. I think it's a real problem. If I didn't think it was a real problem then I'd be an anarcho-capitalist. But what is it, exactly, that makes the free-rider problem a real problem? Inaccurate value signals result in society's limited resources being inefficiently allocated. If you genuinely care about the free-rider problem... and understand why it's a real problem... then you should appreciate the value of this forum facilitating micropayments. Why? Because the value signals will become more accurate and society's limited resources will be more efficiently allocated.

The anarcho-capitalist system doesn't have free riders. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

The issue with free-riding was, is, and ever shall be that people obtain things for less than the cost to produce them. It's that if sale cost drops below production cost, demand doesn't necessarily support supply.

It's kinda cool that you drew a graph... but why didn't you just use Google slides? For example....

Because I don't care about false precision.

And you seem to have not paid attention to anything I've actually said about your graph, or about the problem at hand.

With the DVD model...
1. we can't see consumer surplus
2. we can't see buyers' remorse
3. we can't see all the people who would have bought the DVD for less money
4. we can't see all the people who would have bought the DVD for more money

1. Irrelevant.
2. Manifests as second-hand sales which reduce total sold compared to total number of people who possess DVDs at some point.
3. See 2, and also people who would buy for less can often wait for sales and literally buy the same DVD for less.
4. Again, buying at release, special editions, limited editions, additional merchandise. There's a lot of ways that you can pay more for a better/fancier/whatever version. This also, fundamentally, presumes that people are irrational (namely that they would buy for a much higher price than is required).

With the pragmatarian model...
1. Subscribers have no incentive to hide their true valuations of the show

Saving the money they now don't have to spend on buying DVDs to spend on stuff that is still sold privately. Or not stating valuations of popular shows in order to support the existence of more niche-interest ones.

Sure, producers try and milk the demand for all its worth. So maybe with the current system the demand shape wouldn't be a rectangle. But producers still aren't seeing the consumer surplus or buyer's remorse. They still aren't seeing how much I, or any other, Netflix subscriber value their show. They don't see all the people who would have purchased the DVD at lower prices or higher prices. Except in those cases they do lower the price of the DVD. However, the bottom line is that what producers don't see is far greater than what they do see. So the value signals will be inaccurate... and the supply of digital content will be wrong.

You are ignoring the possibility of people paying less than they otherwise would have to.

Seriously, it's pretty much the basic flaw that all three of us (Maqo, Galloism, and me) have been repeatedly pointing out to you throughout the thread.

With the Netflix pragmatarian model... what incentive do subscribers have to lie about their valuations? It's not like doing so would reduce their monthly fees.

Setting aside the obvious way to extract money out of non-curated systems, which larger versions of this you've advocated elsewhere would necessarily be,

If you lie about your valuations and say the entire thing is overpriced, by your arguments that will lead to monthly fees being reduced.

It's rational for me to try and film a movie so that I can pay myself $10 dollars per month? Netflix would still choose its content.

Doesn't scale out to cases where money doesn't have to be distributed to a particular good, and fundamentally incompatible with the notion that all digital goods are meant to be on a pragmatarian marketplace, not just the ones that have passed some sort of curation process.

It's pretty ridiculous that you think that people are going to work in order to buy things that they already have a surplus of. Society would totally implode if people continually bought things that they had more than enough of.

That's not what I said.

Buy whatever is left in the private sector? With the Netflix pragmatarian model you could either spend your fees on Rake... or shoes for yourself? Seriously guy?

And how does this work when the same pragmatarian system that is being used to allocate money for digital goods is being used to allocate money for the entire public sector? How does it work when all film sales, including sales of "Tofu's brief documentary, expounding on the flaws of the pragmatarian system" are under this system?

Again, your attempts to fix this problem destroy any ability to apply properties of this system to the various larger systems you have proposed.

1. OPFA does not allow spenders to honestly communicate their valuations. One price really does not fit all. So the value signals are inaccurate.
2. Representatives aren't omniscient. They don't know our valuations... so the value signals they create are totally inaccurate.
3. Voluntary contributions are subject to the free-rider problem so the value signals are too dim.
4. The pragmatarian model, when properly constructed, minimizes the incentive for spenders to lie about their valuations. Therefore, the value signals are the most accurate.

1. The status quo is already not OPFA.
2. Irrelevant.
3. Pragmatarian systems specifically allow free riding as well.
4. As has been extensively explained already, and for that matter has been specifically defended by you, pragmatarian systems incentivise you to not declare valuations to things that others support even if you also value them. Among other failings.

So it doesn't take me, or any other member, any time to produce our posts? Or... it takes some of us a lot of time but our time is worthless? This use of our time has absolutely no opportunity cost? Again, get your story straight.

My story is straight.

I have no ability to oblige you to take time to post, and whatever I do doesn't affect your use of time. Well, unless you decide to use said time to discuss things with me, but that's a decision that's very much in your hands.

You said, "Oh noes, the division of labor! There are so many public goods! However shall people study each and every public good and become an expert on all of them????! Where will they find the time!!??? They'll have to quit their day jobs!!! Oh the humanity.... and the horror... and the humanity... and the horror!!!!"

I said, "Get a clue. There are far more goods in the private sector and a decentralized system works a lot better for all these goods than the centralized system would."

It's so nice of you to quote me honestly.

You have repeatedly ignored flaws that render your system extremely dissimilar from the private market, but you still try and use that analogy to justify it.

[Xerographica]

So you'd simply film your bullshit movie and then send it to Netflix? They'd watch it and realize it was bullshit but serve it to their subscribers anyways?

Why pay people to watch it?

Netflix doesn't currently serve random videos. And this certainly wouldn't change if they switched to the pragmatarian model.

Where did I say that I want to remove it? If we implemented pragmatarianism... then we'd have a market in the private sector and a market in the public sector.

And the market in the public sector, as you have theorized it, has NO COST SIGNALS.

Cost signals are a signal where the producer says "you payment must be this tall for you to ride."

You want to REMOVE cost signals.

Netflix, as you've theorized it, has successfully removed the cost signals from its content producers. The content producer no longer communicate cost signals to netflix.

You are trying to REMOVE information from the system.

What are you talking about? With the current system... if Netflix wants its subscribers to be able to watch Rake... then Netflix has to pay the producers of Rake. This would change if Netflix switched to a pragmatarian model? Sure.... but does it have to? I don't know.

Netflix pays $X for Rake and subscribers allocate $Y to Rake. What's X and Y? Clearly there's a problem for Netflix if X is larger than Y. But the producers of Rake would clearly be able to see that Netflix subscribers are only allocating $Y to Rake. So wouldn't it be reasonable for the producers of Rake to charge Netflix an amount that's less than $Y? But what happens if Netflix subscribers start allocating more and more money to Rake?

Given that the producers of Rake are going to be able to clearly see how much money Netflix subscribers allocate to their show... they might as well simply settle for a reasonable percentage of that money.

[Galloism]

Why pay people to watch it?

Netflix doesn't currently serve random videos. And this certainly wouldn't change if they switched to the pragmatarian model.

Why not?

Under the current system, Netflix must pay licensing fees for content. In order to make sure they're getting the best value for their customers, it is in their interest to only buy content that a significant proportion of their customers will like, otherwise they are buying things they can't sell, and will be wasting money.

Under YOUR system, they no longer pay licensing fees for content, so who cares? You got a video you want to put in our service? Server's thataway. There's no practical upper limit to how much content you can host, and there's no opportunity cost for them to add content, so why not just add all the content you can get?

And the market in the public sector, as you have theorized it, has NO COST SIGNALS.

Cost signals are a signal where the producer says "you payment must be this tall for you to ride."

You want to REMOVE cost signals.

Netflix, as you've theorized it, has successfully removed the cost signals from its content producers. The content producer no longer communicate cost signals to netflix.

You are trying to REMOVE information from the system.

What are you talking about? With the current system... if Netflix wants its subscribers to be able to watch Rake... then Netflix has to pay the producers of Rake. This would change if Netflix switched to a pragmatarian model? Sure.... but does it have to? I don't know.

That's how you want it. You want to REMOVE the cost signals that Netflix has to go by.