Higgamus Hoggamus

A while back, I wrote a little piece on the euvoluntarity of plural marriage. At the time, I wrote that objections to polygamy were an example of organized question-begging: polygamy is non-euvoluntary because it's not under the aegis of a conventional capacity for exchange, therefore it must remain illegal. Had I been a bit more thorough, I would have mentioned the downside risk of more young men missing out on the marriage market (in an overlapping-generations model, the median marriage age for men increases in a polygynous society; for polyandry, women delay nuptuals in equilibrium). It could be that packs of feral boys would destabilize the peace we've all come to cherish under a regime that permitted plural marriages.

It could be, but somehow, I don't think it's all that likely. There are lots of ways for unwed men to compete for mates. Depending on the prevailing attitudes towards status, competition could be vigorous participation in the labor market, expressions of creativity, hooliganism, political participation, whatever. The point is, simply assuming the worst in the face of proposed institutional change is insufficient. When political scientists say "assume anarchy", it's not a call for worst-first thinking, it's a plea for circumspection (circumspection Tony--get your mind out of the gutter). It's important that a proposed policy change include a survey of what the world looks like with and without the regulation.

In the case of polygamy, the anarchy condition has to recognize that in market societies, competition for mates is often quite peaceful, and can even be positive-sum. I think we'd also have to recognize that in the US anyway, polygamy would be practiced by a vanishingly small minority. If the harms are negligible and the rates of occurrence are statistically invisible, then I wonder who it is laws against polygamy are protecting? Indeed, it might well be the case that the abusive, child-bride instances of polygamy gone wrong are driven even further underground by uniformed officers of the law and the principals they represent.

Can we imagine a world that allows for plural marriage? Or is it so morally offensive that we dare not speak its name?

Pronunciation Reminder

How to pronounce "euvoluntary," a quick reminder.

Say the following out loud:

1. Turn
2. U-Turn

Easy enough. Now try:

1. Voluntary
2. Euvoluntary

I know it looks silly like this, but I chronically mess up terms I only ever see in print. I was just shy of 30 before I learned how "coiffed" is pronounced. And just this last weekend, I heard alternate pronunciations of "Hobbesian." So, you know, I shouldn't make assumptions about how others might endeavor to utter a new word.

Poppin' Tags

HuffPo reports that Goodwill Industries employs people with disabilities at wages below the government mandated rate.

ATSRTWT

Note the rhetorical strategy: highlight the CEO pay as if it's somehow relevant for the MRP of the line employees. BATNA disparity up one side and down the other. Outrage.

Question for the Euvoluntary Exchangers in the house: is it ever possible to have a euvoluntary labor contract with someone who has severe cognitive disabilities? Milton Friedman was famous for carving out agency exceptions for the disabled. If there is some limit to the ability of some folks to commit to contracts, how are those limits prescribed? "You're taking advantage of these poor folks" isn't much of an argument from afar. There are too many plausible counterfactual stories to tell without closer case-by-case inspection, no matter how offensive it seems.

But I have to agree that in the absence of closer inspection, it does sure taste offensive. I'll be interested to see how Goodwill responds.

Euvoluntary Exchange

To avoid being excessively tendentious, this post offers an overview and a review of the EE project. What is euvoluntary exchange? Why should we care about it? How do we use its insights to make greater sense of the world?

What is the euvoluntary exchange project? I see its purpose as an attempt to skitter past many of the orthogonality problems ordinary folks have when they discuss oddities in the marketplace. By identifying clear boundaries around a set of trades that pretty much everyone can agree upon, all us frogs can sit on the same lily pad before jumping off into the pond to talk about exploitation or coercion or paternalism or irrationality or what-have-ye. Good discussion, good pedestrian philosophy, good common-sense economics, good armchair political science starts out with everyone on the same footing, using the same clear language with the same clear definitions. The six sidebar conditions fence in some of the wilderness and let us explore the frontier together. This is an important contribution to the exchange of ideas, particularly when cheap information permits the ready formation of insularity.

What is the euvoluntary exchange idea? Folks approach the world with a set of values and a set of beliefs. Values arise from moral warrants and are perhaps less subject to change than beliefs, which reside in the halls of reason and are therefore relatively more prone to argumentation than values. The euvoluntary exchange idea casts a wide net for a set of commonly-held values. Economists, particularly those of a free-market bent, have a peculiar habit of elevating the public role of a relatively small set of moral principles and relegating the remainder to the realm of private activity. Almost any economist will admit that love, admiration, envy, and pride are part of the human experience, but few are as willing to incorporate these considerations into policy prescriptions compared to a typical voter in a democracy. This leads these economist types to sanction (what a funny word, it means its opposite) an uncomfortably large range of trades. The EE idea defines a narrow bit of pasture to what is pretty likely to be trades that don't offend the values of ordinary folks.

What are the euvoluntary exchange conditions? The role of the conditions in the sidebar are to lend a rough and ready guide to common intuitions: trade in stolen goods, the writing of contracts not allowed by common or international merchant law, the sale of hazardous or addictive substances, the use of venal force to fix terms of trade, and most importantly exchange with folks in desperate or highly unequal situations can all, jointly and severally cross ordinary folks' moral boundaries. The six conditions of euvoluntary exchange wrap crime scene tape around the investigation scene. I see the purpose of this blog as a team of detectives examining the evidence. We're the Hardly Boys and we just want to ask you a few questions.

When I started thinking of things in terms of euvoluntary exchange, it helped ease a sense of frustration. I didn't understand why decades of cruel and unusual public policy saw otherwise innocent marijuana users chucked in penitentiaries with violent criminals to placate the peccadilloes of paternalists. Now that I have an EE toolkit, I still think America's drug policy is wrong, but I'm better able to engage the moral reasoning that underpins the policy and adjust my arguments accordingly. It's my hope that folks who might disagree with me on other topics might do the same: start from an EE position, see where violations happen, then reason from there. This approach makes it easier to spot differences in values as well as analytical blind spots. We still may disagree on issues, but at least we'll stop talking past each other.

Or that's the hope anyway.

Sad. But Illegal?

In a pathetic way, this woman is trying to take responsibility for her child (though, since she's pregnant again, it's hard to predict a good outcome).

"Stephanie Redus, 29, told authorities that she placed the ad [on Craigslist] because she struggles with depression and anxiety, CBS Houston reports. She is currently pregnant. The ad stated:

'Hi, I'm trying to adopt out my three-year-old son. I'm not in a good place in my life and don't feel like I can care for him properly, but I don't know where to start. If you or know anyone who is interested in caring for him please let me know. I'm a single mom and can't do this. Thanks, Desperate.'

...Redus is charged with advertising for placement of a child."

ATSRTWT

 So, the lady is NOT trying to sell her son, she is trying to "adopt out" the lad.  Doing it on Craig's List is a bad idea, since the state has asserted a monopoly on controlling adoption.  But is that right?  Should a parent be able to make arrangements to take of her own child? 

Note that if she were advertising for day care, or extended care, and SHE could pay, it would be fine.  The mom can advertise for an arrangement to take care of her child if she is rich.

And it would be clearly wrong if she were trying to sell the child, asking for money in exchange for "title" in the form of adoption.

The middle case, this one, is the interesting one.  Can she give the child away?  And, if so, can she use social media to try to find a good match?

Nod to Kevin Lewis

How Interesting: When Disability Is An Asset

So, it appears that people are hiring tour guides at the Tragic Kingdom, my old employer Disney World in Orlando, FL.

Nothing surprising about that .  But there is a wrinkle.  If there is a disabled person in your party, you get to cut the line.  This can save an hour, or more, at each ride.

That--the right to cut the line--is a valuable asset.  It's non-transferable, though, as it should be.  The disabled person can't sell the right to cut in line to someone else who is able-bodied.

Now, growing up in Central Florida, I have seen parties where one person was the designated wheel-chair person, having just pretended to be disabled so the group can cut in line.  That's wrong, no good, etc.

But can you hire a disabled person, someone you don't know, to go around with your party?  Is the exchange euvoluntary?  The disabled person (presumably) is made better off.  In fact, otherwise unemployed people may now get jobs, where someone else pays their ticket cost, and pushes them around to go on Disney rides for free, and not have to wait in line.

The problem is that all the other people in the party get to cut the line also, because they are paying the disabled person to be their "guide."  Perhaps the disabled person is also a good tour guide, having been to the Tragic Kingdom 100 times or 1000 times on one of these gigs.  But the tour guide part--meaning pointing out the sites and talking about history-- is NOT what makes the hire attractive.  It's the disability part.  It's the wheelchair.

The people hiring the "tour guide" must be better off, or think they are.  The tour guide is explointing his/her disability, but it's a job.

Who is harmed?  The people waiting in line are likely to have wait a little longer, but if this practice is not too widespread it won't be over a minute or two (times 500 people in line, that's a real cost, of course).

Should this practice be illegal?  We give disabled people other privileges, why not this one?  Is it euvoluntary, or should the state intervene?

(nod to Jeremy Balog)

UPDATE:  Check back two days earlier for SW's take on the same issue.  I should have checked!

Clobberin' Time

Reading Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature has prompted me to think more about the nature of civilization and violence. Bound up in that is euvoluntary exchange (obviously).

See, there's the nearly intractable joint determination problem when we're thinking about why it is the human world is so vastly more wealthy than it was in antiquity. Or even in prehistory, supposing that the experiences of modern forager communities help illuminate the violence inherent in the system, so to speak. The puzzle has a lot of facets: we know (or suspect) that the following stuff all goes together: the rise of strong central elites that curbed the rapaciousness of local elites, the advancement of technologies that permitted economies of scale (including economies of scale in taxation!), liberal democracy, (relatively) free trade, bourgeois virtues, cosmopolitanism, &c. We know what the ingredients in the stew of prosperity are, but our experiences with misadventures in foreign aid suggest that we don't understand how to repeat the recipe's instructions.

Economic growth and all the good things it brings enjoys one and only one proximate cause: trade. Trade happens thanks to production, which is cradled by hammocks of trust strung between the palms of The Law growing in the grove of peace. Extend the metaphor as you see fit. It might be interesting to posit changes to some of the parameters of the general equilibrium and imagine what might happen. Perhaps fortunately, there's no shortage of parameter adjustments to choose from. Many of them sit nestled in comic book universes.

That's right, I want you to consider euvoluntary exchange in the Marvel universe.

Consider first what capital accumulation means in a world where the Incredible Hulk goes on periodic urban rampages. It's a bit of an error to treat these incidents the way you might treat other existential threats like earthquakes or floods. Yes, port cities (especially in the Pacific Rim) are at risk of tsunami, but this risk is a function of geological instability, whereas the risk of HULK SMASH comes exclusively from the probability that Bruce Banner happens to run into a gang of toughs on or about Skid Row. In the Marvel universe (Silver Age or later anyway, and I'm not getting into Gray Hulk or any of the other side stories), cities are at risk simply from being cities.

One way to think about cities is that it's just another technology. It's a technology that permits euvoluntary exchange by lowering the cost of doing business and by offering a wider range of consumption opportunities for residents in a much smaller geographical area. Take a stroll through Lower Manhattan the next time you find yourself in the Big Apple. Ask yourself how far and wide you'd have to go in Oklahoma (apologies to our cousins at Cherokee Gothic) to find the same array of goods on offer. Superheroes and their nemeses raise the relative price of this technology, suggesting that over a sufficiently long time horizon (thanks, Second Law of Demand), folks would substitute away from cities, perhaps indulging in exurban sprawl and investing more in high-quality, hardened communications networks. Extremely dense cities like Hong Kong and Singapore would likely never have arisen.

Why think about any of this? Well, the analog to the X-Men shooting eye beams all over LA is any overpowered organization with no overarching agent to keep it in check. As municipal police forces become increasingly militarized, or city councils more confiscatory, they become less distinguishable from a rampaging Incredible Hulk. It's worth pondering what some of the possible outcomes might be. What's more euvoluntary: to redirect police effort away from no-knock raids in support of the War on Drugs Peaceful People Who Use Drugs, to hobble the tax-and-regulation crony capitalism of local political elites, or to retool the organization of society towards a canvas of elite enclaves, middle class exurban sprawl, and impoverished city centers? The answer seems obvious to me: restrict the scope of state action to what it's good at and you'll have more opportunity for euvoluntary exchange. But what do I know? I'm a DC fan and I live in the 'burbs.