Klingon Bastards

On Twitter:
1)

.@GarettJones Banking crises are not new, so how can we stop history repeating itself? #PalgraveChat

— Palgrave Economics (@PalgraveEcon) November 19, 2015

2)

>@PalgraveEcon Worst case scenario is we have to live with crises: Humans are faddish, bubble-prone. (1/2) #PalgraveChat

— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) November 19, 2015

3)

>@PalgraveEcon Best case scenario is that we can make the financial system (not just banks!) more robust to shocks. (2/2) #PalgraveChat

— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) November 19, 2015

4)

Good trick, if you can pull it off. https://t.co/J20VO9t6qg

— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) November 19, 2015

5)

>@Spivonomist Indeed, good policy is hard to pull off, between policy commitment issues, lags, and knowledge problems. #PalgraveChat

— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) November 19, 2015

6)

Good thing we enjoy a high-IQ society. If anyone can get the job done, it's bright people working in functioning institutions. @GarettJones

— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) November 19, 2015

7)

@Spivonomist All options are bad, it's a matter of degree: It's the Kobayashi Maru all the way down! #PalgraveChat pic.twitter.com/GS7Pwwt9Vu

— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) November 19, 2015

8)

@GarettJones I still wonder how meta that simulation is meant to be in-universe.

— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) November 19, 2015

That last tweet of mine there (I'm Spivonomist) demands a little explanation.

In case you aren't a Trek fan, the Kobayashi Maru is a computer simulation given to last-year Starfleet officer candidates. With the original programming, it is an unwinnable scenario. Your ship receives a distress call from an allied vessel. If you choose to respond, you are quickly ambushed and destroyed. If you ignore the call, your ally is annihilated. There is no classic Pareto-enhancing victory strategy.

Except to cheat.

That's what Kirk did: cheated. Both in the original Roddenberry film and in the Abrams reboot, James Tiberius Kirk surreptitiously rewrote the code for the simulation and emerged victorious over the Klingon (presumably Romulan after the Khitomer Accords were signed) foes. In the Abrams reboot, I think the screenplay suggested that the cheating itself was part of the test. Or if not, by the time Picard's crew was tooling around, it surely would be.

If this test is as meta as I hope, it checks for lateral thinking and a willingness to bend the rules. In 1982, when Wrath of Khan introduced the test, Kirk's cheating came across as sincere cheating. In 2009, the cheating seemed part of the game. If the metaphor was meant to extend to the nexus of politics and financial markets, Jones is right on the money. Even Hollywood sees that the Commanding Heights are big-time cheaters, and so long as the consequences are still beneficial, the audience should be okay with it.

I think Roddenberry [ed. Adam Gurri reminds me that it was Nick Meier, not Gene Roddenberry who wrote and directed Wrath of Khan. Thank you, Adam. ed. add.: via GJ Jack Sowards coined the term Kobaysahi Maru after his neighbors] would have been appalled. There's a certain type for whom the rules are sacrosanct. Cheat not lest ye be cheated. Tinkering with the architecture of big-time institutions is risky on scales I think even pretty well educated people probably don't comprehend very well. And our political and commercial elites have been tinkering for many decades, with no plan to stop. If Jones is right, and I see no good reason to dispute his point, the real trick is to make sure any further tinkering is done with the grave lessons of good public choice economics in mind.

And like I tweeted, this is a very good trick if you can pull it off.

I, Sandwich

Well, almost I, Sandwich. Pay attention to all the capital used, from the stoves, to the boat, to the farms, to the plastic jugs, piped gas, &c &c &c. But even with all that, making a humble sandwich from (almost) scratch should lend an appreciation for the BATNA to market exchange, a BATNA that folks in, eg, Venezuela are obliged to accept.

Polyamory on the Margins

I'm coming around to the idea that polyamory may not be as euvoluntary as I'd previously argued. Short version: a polyamorous marriage may be fine, but I have to agree that as an institution, it has some pretty serious predicted shortcomings.

So here's the question: does the logic of prohibition apply to plural marriage? Will desperate consumers resort to black market harems to secure illicit booty? Would a legal regime in which abused plural marriage spouses were free to contact law enforcement agents for assistance without fear of reprisal reduce the severity and frequency of bride trafficking?

I'm not familiar enough with the law enforcement statistics to judge. Swinging is legal, so is cohabitation. A married couple can have a "roommate" without attracting attention. Open marriages are fine. People are already pretty much at liberty to set the terms of their domestic arrangements, so it's difficult to say that there's much of a thwarted market the way there is for cocaine or extended-capacity AK-47 magazines. It's possible that whatever downsides that accompany polygamous institutional arrangements are already being felt. If so, to consider a legal regime means to consider what the potential upsides would be.

I'm not sure what they'd be though. Inheritance? Estate execution? There's not much common law guidance there other than what already exists for business partnerships. Seems kind of a slender reed.

At any rate, I think one of the problems with discussions of law and relationships is one side is talking about private costs and benefits, while the other is talking about public costs and benefits. Is it a self-interest debate or is it an institutional debate? And which of those should provide a basis for a compelling state interest?

Mind Your Manners

As near as I can tell, this arrangement seems perfectly euvoluntary. Odd then that both the headline and the content of the story seems to have been written to maximize obnoxiousness.

The "Mother's Dilemma" is the economic question of how to organize household resources. Typically, household wealth is commonly held and decisions over who gets what are determined by either a single dictator or a joint committee. What mom and dad say goes. But if other families want to allocate their resources differently, it boggles the mind that such decisions could possibly be anyone else's business. The relationship between home and castle seems increasingly tenuous. More's the pity.

Benthams Calculating Machine: Pain, Pleasure, Experimental Manipulation

Bentham thought behavior could be explained by a "felicific calculus."

And so...as Kevin Lewis asked, "Do crabs run regressions?"  At a minimum, they appear to be using a utilitarian calculus.

Changing the value of the shell is coercion.  Is leaving the shell voluntary?  What if the damage to the shell occurs for "natural" reasons?

What about Aristotle's example of the ship's captain?  (NE, Book III)

But with regard to the things that are done from fear of greater evils or for some noble object (e.g. if a tyrant were to order one to do something base, having one's parents and children in his power, and if one did the action they were to be saved, but otherwise would be put to death), it may be debated whether such actions are involuntary or voluntary. Something of the sort happens also with regard to the throwing of goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himself and his crew any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions; for they are worthy of choice at the time when they are done, and the end of an action is relative to the occasion. Both the terms, then, 'voluntary' and 'involuntary', must be used with reference to the moment of action. Now the man acts voluntarily; for the principle that moves the instrumental parts of the body in such actions is in him, and the things of which the moving principle is in a man himself are in his power to do or not to do. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself. 

If the crab leaves its shell because an experimenter pesters it, that is not voluntary.  If the crab leaves its shell because the crab has outgrown the shell, that is presumably voluntary.  If the crab leaves the shell because a storm has cracked the shell....