Alabama's education ranking, explained

[KrazyHorse]

Even from a game theory point of view, it's not clear that this is the best "greedy" strategy. You could imagine that the people offering these types of services form an organization, put you in a blacklist after you don't cooperate and, in the long run, your "strategy" is worse than if you had paid back a fraction of what you net each time you cooperate.

That's a highly dubious scenario. In fact, you can make the case that NOT paying this guy is the right thing to do, even from a net social good standpoint;

1) The thousand bucks Arrian is owed represents a transfer from the government to him (a homeowner, i.e. richer than average). If the government has to repay him then they will have to recollect that money at some point in higher taxes on everybody. Since Arrian didn't even know the money was owed to him, his behaviour was not being distorted by the implicit "tax" being levied on him. Standard taxation, on the other hand, is distortionary. The transfer from the government to Arrian is thus welfare destroying.

2) Even if the transaction was welfare neutral, then by paying this man Arrian encourages further efforts on his part. These efforts have some cost associated with them, yet all they do is promote a welfare neutral transaction.

Arrian thus has a social responsibility to NOT pay the man (again, this differs from tipping, where tips encourage welfare-creating transactions, i.e. good service)

[Kuciwalker]

Who's being a dick? Arrian should keep the money and send the guy a note saying that he's doing so.

Look at step 3 of his post:

3) Write Mr. Boggs back, thank him ever so much for tipping us off and explaining that the [insert charitable org here*] was pleased to accept our donation, including the money he thought we'd give him as a finder's fee.

-Arrian

* - if possible, find out enough about Mr. Boggs to pick a charity he probably won't like much.

[KrazyHorse]

Missed the star part before.

[Kuciwalker]

1) The thousand bucks Arrian is owed represents a transfer from the government to him (a homeowner, i.e. richer than average). If the government has to repay him then they will have to recollect that money at some point in higher taxes on everybody. Since Arrian didn't even know the money was owed to him, his behaviour was not being distorted by the implicit "tax" being levied on him. Standard taxation, on the other hand, is distortionary. The transfer from the government to Arrian is thus welfare destroying.

This doesn't seem to me to be true. He essentially believes the tax rate to be higher than the true value. That has to affect his behavior.

[KrazyHorse]

It has ALREADY affected his behaviour (i.e. when he or his wife paid the gov't extra money; or even earlier, when they realized that they would have to pay the government extra money)

Most people do not quite react to costs according to the permanent income hypothesis. Instead they amortize over a shorter period of time. Assuming it's been several years since the overpayments, the harm is probably already mostly done.

[Kuciwalker]

Sure, but most of the people this guy finds could be less overdue for repayment.

Not to mention, one of the scenarios LT mentioned is plausible. This guy could know of many things to search about, and he uses this one to select for the people who will actually pay him back.

[rah]

See that's the problem with looking at the common good instead of pure self interest.
Way too complicated

And I checked the list, but I'm not on it or any of my relatives. Damn.

[Lul Thyme]

That's a highly dubious scenario.

Yes of course. I was discussing more the general idea than this particular case.

In fact, you can make the case that NOT paying this guy is the right thing to do, even from a net social good standpoint;

1) The thousand bucks Arrian is owed represents a transfer from the government to him (a homeowner, i.e. richer than average). If the government has to repay him then they will have to recollect that money at some point in higher taxes on everybody. Since Arrian didn't even know the money was owed to him, his behaviour was not being distorted by the implicit "tax" being levied on him. Standard taxation, on the other hand, is distortionary. The transfer from the government to Arrian is thus welfare destroying.

2) Even if the transaction was welfare neutral, then by paying this man Arrian encourages further efforts on his part. These efforts have some cost associated with them, yet all they do is promote a welfare neutral transaction.

Arrian thus has a social responsibility to NOT pay the man (again, this differs from tipping, where tips encourage welfare-creating transactions, i.e. good service)

This is all very case-specific. It seemed that, by now, we were discussing more the general situation of "somebody does something which you didn't ask for but helps you". (squeegees, the snow-shoveling kid, etc..)

For example, we could replace the tax return by the guy claiming that he's aware of a treasure buried in your backyard, telling you where it is and asking for 10% or something like that.

A lot of your previous arguments don't discriminate between those two situations. For example, "He's not doing you a favour. He's attempting to prey on people's goodwill in order to get paid for very little effort on his part." could still be true in this case, yet the situation doesn't seem clear-cut to me. It's not obvious to me that cooperating is necessarily wrong.

[Kitschum]

He contacted you twice? Get a restraining order.

[KrazyHorse]

Kuci

Again, some part of the distortionary effect on those people is already done. Plus this has to do with people who are being subsidized by FHA in the first place, so the overpayments may actually have gone some way to correcting a distortion. I don't think it's cut and dried that there is a negative welfare effect from the government returning overpayments; I'm just presenting it as a plausible hypothesis.

In fact, you can make the case

etc

[KrazyHorse]

See that's the problem with looking at the common good instead of pure self interest.
Way too complicated

And I checked the list, but I'm not on it or any of my relatives. Damn.

Pure self interest in this case is almost certainly for him to keep all the money.

By the way, if anybody finds their name up there they owe me 10%

[rah]

If my name had been on it, i probably would have sent you a few bucks for posting the link.
Again I'll repeat that I agree with you but since it was over a grand, I'd be feeling a touch generous.

[Lul Thyme]

See that's the problem with looking at the common good instead of pure self interest.
Way too complicated

Pure self interest in this case is almost certainly for him to keep all the money.

I disagree that it's this clear-cut.
It certainly is the SHORT TERM self-interest choice, but we live in a society, people sometimes remember things and decisions can bite you in the back, sometimes in unexpected ways.

[KrazyHorse]

This is all very case-specific. It seemed that, by now, we were discussing more the general situation of "somebody does something which you didn't ask for but helps you". (squeegees, the snow-shoveling kid, etc..)

Perhaps you didn't get this part, but "moral imperative" as I'm using it is distinct from "social good" as well as "individual good". So in fact you were the one to start us down this diversion (if that's what you wish to call it).

[KrazyHorse]

I disagree that it's this clear-cut.
It certainly is the SHORT TERM self-interest choice, but we live in a society, people sometimes remember things and decisions can bite you in the back, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Perhaps you don't realise it, but our society is ****ing HUGE. The chances of him having another interaction with this gentleman or with somebody who this gentleman has passed his name on to is ridiculously low.