Why doesn't the gov't legislate what people buy with food stamps?

[Al B. Sure!]

Riesstiu:

Check this out from wiki:

Karol Capel:
Weapon: Swords, Axes and Hammers
Sub-Weapon: Bags

Sub-weapon... bags... what the **** kind of game is this?

[Hauldren Collider]

I'm not saying democracy is paritculary good at aggregating information. Unless you are proposing something like Futarchy or some other market solution to governance you are kind of incoherent with this statement, since democracy is in theory better at aggregating information than the goverment types tryed or from things like Technocracy or Anarchosyndicalism.


In short you are saying you know better than the morons what policies are in their best interest.

I can't tell if you are actually disagreeing with me but your post is incomprehensible so I'm ignoring it.

[Hauldren Collider]

Riesstiu:

Check this out from wiki:

Karol Capel:
Weapon: Swords, Axes and Hammers
Sub-Weapon: Bags

Sub-weapon... bags... what the **** kind of game is this?

A really fun one, and you've just explained why no one plays as ****face.

[Kuciwalker]

KH: I'm curious about your response to #180

[Al B. Sure!]

A really fun one, and you've just explained why no one plays as ****face.

Interesting

[Heraclitus]

Want to bet that more Jews (on a percentage of marriages basis) marry out of their faith than either Christians, Hindus, atheists/agnostics, or Muslims in the US?

Duh. Only Frummy Jews bother with anything that could be described as endogamus marriage. Jews in the US are as a group dissapearing precisley because there is so little antisemitism in the US (compared to historic and global levels), a sad irony.

However Jews (esp the Secular Jews who are doing the intermmarying) are more an ethnicity than nearly all the examples you cited (with the possible exception of Hindus).


As to atheists/agnostics I really doubt this.

[Al B. Sure!]

Hera:

Are you 21? And are you a cop?

[Heraclitus]

Not my parents...like i've said before, I'm not ACTUALLY jewish. Only my father.

In pre-Rabbinic times descent was patrilineal. The Torah dosen't explicitly state Matrilenear descent. You've got some wiggle room left. And Reformtards accept anyone.


Anycase in a ethnic and possibly genetic sense (unless your father is a covnert) you are half Jewish.

[Heraclitus]

Hera:

Are you 21? And are you a cop?

No.

[KrazyHorse]

Decreasing marginal utility should already be handled by an individual's utility function.

Of course. I am simply pointing out that you have to know how these functions behave in order to do any reasonably quantitative analysis.

The problem is that people discount their own future welfare when making decisions, which results in choices that are suboptimal in a predictable and [possibly, partially] correctable way through incentives.

While I agree that human beings show some signs of "irrationality" in decision-making (e.g. hyperbolic discounting) I think you should bear in mind that these are far less important than the ability of most individuals to utility maximize under normal circumstances. And while I agree that there is a case for government pushing incentives slightly one way or another, you have to remember that government is usually makes FAR more irrational decisions when it comes to individual welfare than the individual himself does.

Remember that there are SERIOUS problems when it comes to government actions:

1) Agency problems of all kinds; incentives for gov't agents are generally badly misaligned with those whose behaviours they try to modify

2) Informational problems: do you really think that the government knows better than I do how much I value that next twinkie relative to the 300 extra calories?

Governments tend to overreact by orders of magnitude. Remember that before you make an argument in favour of something more reasoned than, e.g. Albert or GePap's nonsense.

[KrazyHorse]

However Jews (esp the Secular Jews who are doing the intermmarying) are more an ethnicity than nearly all the examples you cited (with the possible exception of Hindus).


As to atheists/agnostics I really doubt this.

That was more of a troll than anything

[Heraclitus]

I can't tell if you are actually disagreeing with me but your post is incomprehensible so I'm ignoring it.

Democracies in theory aggregating available information better than all the other tried types and even some theoretical types like Technocracy.

Currently only market based solutions to governance seem to have a plausible chance at outperforming them (like Robin Hanson's proposed Futarchy).

You basically said that by having the public have less say (more people shouldn't vote) this will somehow improve aggregation of available information.


Hence considering the topic of the thread I loled

[Al B. Sure!]

2) Informational problems: do you really think that the government knows better than I do how much I value that next twinkie relative to the 300 extra calories?

Why do you think the government wouldn't know better? Government policy-makers have more information re: nutrition than the average person does. The average person is not a dietician or doctor.

[KrazyHorse]

You're an idiot.

The government has NO IDEA how much I like twinkies or how much I like not being fat.

[Heraclitus]

1) Agency problems of all kinds; incentives for gov't agents are generally badly misaligned with those whose behaviours they try to modify

I'm trying to remember how an effect I read about a few months ago is called. Could you spare a minute to help?

Its a term to describe how goverments attempts to improve A by measuring and working on B since B correlates pretty well with A. However this will inevitably result in B being less and less a proxy for A over time.

I wanted to read hunt down the references in its wikipedia article to revise but embarasingly I'm stumpped at how its called.