Public Goodness Survey

[Xerographica]

What is the demand for public goods?  We don't know...and that's a problem.  If taxpayers could choose where their taxes go (logistics), then we would clearly see the demand shape for every public good.  How much variation would there be?  

It stands to reason that if there wasn't enough demand for a public good...then perhaps it shouldn't be a public good.  In order to determine where the public goodness threshold might be...I've created a survey.  

This public goodness survey consists of 10 different hypothetical public goods.  Each public good has its own chart which shows a different demand shape.

To participate in the survey simply rate each public good from 0 to 10...

0 = no depth/breadth = no public goodness
10 = maximum depth/breadth = maximum public goodness

...and indicate whether or not it should be a public good.  

For backstory and analysis...please my blog entry... Visualizing And Evaluating The Public Goodness Threshold.





1. PGA - In this case there's not much depth (people didn't contribute much) but perfect breadth (everybody contributed).  Every single citizen contributed the same exact amount of money to this public good.  Let's say the amount is $5 dollars.  Of course, $5 to the poorest person doesn't mean the same thing as $5 to the richest person.  This is the logic behind the progressive tax...

Economics can establish that a man's marginal utility of money diminishes as his money-income increases. Therefore, they concluded, the marginal utility of a dollar is less to a rich man than to a poor man. Other things being equal, social utility is maximized by a progressive income tax which takes from the rich and gives to the poor. This was the favorite demonstration of the "old welfare economics," grounded on Benthamite utilitarian ethics, and brought to fruition by Edgeworth and Pigou. - Murray Rothbard, Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics

So what does PGA's chart tell us?  It tells us that everybody demands this good.  But income and demand for this good are inversely correlated.  The more money you make, the less accurately this good matches your preferences.



2. PGB - Another straight line.  But, it's twice as high on the y-axis.  So rather than everybody contributing $5...everybody contributes $10.  




3. PGC - Uneven depth but great breadth.  Everybody demands this public good...but income and demand for this good are inversely correlated.  




4. PGD - Lousy depth but great breadth.


 

5. PGE - Good depth and great breadth.




6. PGF - Great depth and breadth.




7. PGG - Great depth but lousy breadth.




8. PGH - Again, great depth but lousy breadth.




9. PGI - And again, great depth but lousy breadth.




10. PGJ - Great depth and decent breadth.  

Can you think of other likely demand shapes?  Would any public goods match any of these shapes?   If anybody would like to create and share their own shapes...just PM me your e-mail address and I'll send you the PowerPoint document.

[Damarcus]

so...did you want a discussion of this? Or are you just leaving this here so we can all complement you on fixing all of society's problems? I'm honestly not entirely sure I get the message you're trying to convey here. Are you just analysing hypotheticals? Or is there an actual survey you are drawing information from?

[aitm]

I'm too stupid to figure out what the fuck they mean.....

oh my god....


that must mean..





















I'm must be a christian.....

[SGOS]

I'm too stupid to figure out what the fuck they mean.....

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.  I can't figure this out either.

[Solitary]

:-k  #-o  :-s  :-? Solitary

[Xerographica]

I'm going to go with a somewhat ironic example.  How many of you have ever attended a typical church service?  When I was a little kid my mother forced me to go each week.  One thing they do during the service is pass offering plates around.  It's a container of sorts...and when it gets to you...you can choose exactly how much money you put in it.  

Let's imagine that there's a church with a really small congregation and you're Dian Fossey's atheist grandson.  Instead of studying gorillas in the mist...you're studying christians in the church.  You hide in the rafters with your binoculars, notebook and bag of power bars.  When it comes time for the offering plate to be passed around...you dutifully write down in your notebook exactly how much money each christian puts in the offering plate...  

Digit - $0
Rafiki - $5
Uncle Bert - $35
Macho - $0
Icarus - $10

You do this for an entire year.  At the end of the year...you add up how much money each christian contributed to their church...

Digit - $5
Macho - $5
Pancho - $5
Icarus - $10
Linus - $10
Obama - $12
Jerry - $15
Tom - $20
Rafiki - $25
Frank - $25
Pigpen - $25
Blink - $30
Joan - $30
Mary - $40
Frost - $45
Strongbad - $45
Carrie - $50
Pompom - $75
Stan - $80
Brittney - $200
Saya - $350
McLovin - $400
Twitch - $700
Butters - $800
Uncle Bert - $1000

In order to visualize the data...you create a graph...



There you go.  You just visually represented the demand for that church.  

What do you think the demand chart would look like for Joel Olsteen's church?  His Lakewood Church is the largest church in America.  Each week an average of 43,500 people attend.  That's between the attendance of baseball games (30,514) and football games (67,604).  

If I had to choose between attending a baseball game or a football game or a service at Olsteen's church...I'd definitely choose the service.  That alone doesn't say much because most sporting events bore me to death.  But a while back I accidentally channel surfed right into Olsteen's net.  His delivery is so silky smooth.  It's so seamless and seemingly so sincere.  It doesn't matter if he's a fake...it would be like accusing Kevin Spacey of not truly being the character that he's portraying in a movie.  It doesn't matter how big the disparity is between an actor and his character...a remarkable performance is still remarkable.  

We know what the demand is for Olsteen, Spacey and sporting events....but we don't know what the demand is for public goods.  This is a problem.  Demand opacity is the most pressing problem we face as a society.  But the solution is really simple.  We just have to give taxpayers the freedom to choose where their taxes go.  This will eliminate demand opacity.  

One concern is that the wealthy will have too much influence.  They will spend their taxes on public goods that screw the middle class and poor.  This concern is ridiculous though because if a "public good" harms most of the public...then it really isn't a public good.  A public good is something that is largely beneficial.  And once people can shop for themselves in the public sector...then we'll clearly see the demand depth/breadth for each and every public good.  Therefore, if a public good only benefits the wealthy...this will become readily apparent...and the public good would be removed from the public sector.  The point of this survey is to determine where that "removal" threshold might be.  

Have I helped clarify things?  Or have I mucked things up even more?

Let me try and put it another way.  Imagine that there's a huge city that's only populated by atheists.  For whatever reason, there's not a theist in the city.  Imagine if you went to the bank and asked for a loan to start a church.  What do you think the loan officer would tell you?  "Ah, how brilliant!  You'll have a monopoly!  I wonder why no one else has thought of it before!?"  So the loan officer lends you a million dollars and you start your church.  And of course nobody shows up.  Why?  Because there wouldn't be any demand for a church in a city of atheists.  Errr...well...I guess theists could show up from other cities.  Maybe the absence of churches explains the absence of theists...heh.

The point is...it would be a waste of society's limited resources to build something that there's no demand for.  Just like it would be a waste of society's limited resources to start a war that there's no demand for.  But that's exactly what happens with our current system.   We substitute the actual demand for the guesses of 500 government planners (congresspeople).  But if the guesses of 500 government planners are really that great then we wouldn't need markets.  

Markets work because the guesses of entrepreneurs are tested against reality.  Entrepreneurs that correctly guess the demand will make money.  Failure to correctly guess the demand results in bankruptcy.  Our job as consumers is to reward the entrepreneurs who correctly guess what our demands are.  That's what shopping is all about.  So if people can't shop for themselves in the public sector...then the guesses of government will not be tested against reality.

Yes, the guesses of congresspeople will be tested against elections...but voting doesn't reveal demand.  Voting reveals opinions...not values...  

1. Should we conserve the Amazon rainforest?  Yes/No
2. How much would you like to donate to conserve the Amazon rainforest? _______

The first question reveals your opinion while the second question reveals your values/priorities/preferences.  It's great to know the public's opinions...but it's infinitely more important to know the public's values.  We can't put society's limited resources to their most valuable uses if we don't know what society truly values.  Shopping reveals values which is exactly why it's imperative that we create a market in the public sector.

[Shiranu]

I'm too stupid to figure out what the fuck they mean.....

oh my god....


that must mean..





















I'm must be a christian.....

I'm so stupid, I didn't even bother reading it because I knew it would go over my attention span after like... 3 sentences. I think that might make me a Young Earth Creationist and a Biblical Literalist...

[SGOS]

Have I helped clarify things?  Or have I mucked things up even more?

No that helps.  I had difficulty because all I see is the same chart with different distributions.  I kept looking for a label.  OK, here's one with crummy breath, but great depth.  I kept thinking, "What is it? Nike running shoes?  Side by side refrigerators?  Marriage Counseling?"

But you just want us to decide which has ideal thresholds without knowledge of what they are.  I haven't got that far yet.  I could probably make some guesses about potentials, but they would be wild guesses.  I suspect you plan to surprise us later by showing us the ones we thought would be the greatest public good are actually gia pets (those little animal shaped things that grow grass when they are taken out of the box).  Is that the plan?

The point is...it would be a waste of society's limited resources to build something that there's no demand for.  Just like it would be a waste of society's limited resources to start a war that there's no demand for.  But that's exactly what happens with our current system.   We substitute the actual demand for the guesses of 500 government planners (congresspeople).  But if the guesses of 500 government planners are really that great then we wouldn't need markets.

Technically, government planners don't do this very often.  Usually, they are doing special favors.  Building bridges to nowhere for a special contractor looking for a big project, starting a war for the benefit of the military industrial complex, and those sorts of things.

Markets work because the guesses of entrepreneurs are tested against reality.  Entrepreneurs that correctly guess the demand will make money.  Failure to correctly guess the demand results in bankruptcy.  Our job as consumers is to reward the entrepreneurs who correctly guess what our demands are.  That's what shopping is all about.  So if people can't shop for themselves in the public sector...then the guesses of government will not be tested against reality.

Yes, the guesses of congresspeople will be tested against elections...but voting doesn't reveal demand.  Voting reveals opinions...not values...  

1. Should we conserve the Amazon rainforest?  Yes/No
2. How much would you like to donate to conserve the Amazon rainforest? _______

The first question reveals your opinion while the second question reveals your values/priorities/preferences.  It's great to know the public's opinions...but it's infinitely more important to know the public's values.  We can't put society's limited resources to their most valuable uses if we don't know what society truly values.  Shopping reveals values which is exactly why it's imperative that we create a market in the public sector.  

Yes, of course.  Politics is almost entirely about opinions, not realities.  That should be clear to most people in the forum.  Politicians want a war.  They sell it to the public by lying, manipulating, and propaganda.  But then that's true for consumer products too.  People buy anything, including shit they don't need.   That's why Madison Ave. exists in the free market.

This is a very complex topic, probably the equivalent of 20 simultaneous threads.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I saw the thread creator and figured it had to be some bullshit and true to xero's nature no disappointment was had.  8-)

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I think you meant "public goods survey".

[Jmpty]

As much as I dislike contributing to this thread, I'm going to try and explain, in simple terms, why you are so very wrong. I am an investor. I hold investments in several mutual funds. The way mutual funds work, is that you give some money to some people who know how to make it turn into more money. Why don't I just pick the stocks myself, you might ask, and the reason is, that I don't know as much about the market as these professional guys do, and I have neither the time, or the inclination to learn about it. There are a bunch of people in the world who could give a rat's ass if the Amazon basin was turned into a parking lot, but that doesn't mean, that just because they are ignorant of the benefit of having the rain forest intact, INCLUDING the benefit to them, that they should be able to just say, "No, I don't want my taxes to help preserve the Amazon." There are way to many people who are too oblivious to reality to allow them to make these decisions.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

There is the problem of knowledge.  Most people do not really know the proportions of the budget.

2013 United States federal budget

Here are the top five expenditures.

DHS, Medicare, Medicaid - 940.9 billion, 24.74%
Social Security and Unemployment - 882.7 billion, 23.21%
Department of Defense, including overseas operations - 672.9 billion, 17.69%
Interest on the debt - 246 billion, 6.47%
EVERY FUCKING THING ELSE - 1060.8 billion, 27.89'%

Most people don't know that most of they see the government doing is less than 1/3 of the total budget.  every government small business loan, every government scholarship, every time a TSO gropes a 14 year old girl, every time NASA launches a probe,  every time the DEA raids a state licensed medicinal marijuana establishment, every time a veteran gets medical care, etc., etc., etc.

If people were to choose to which department their taxes go, it would be a fascinating chaos.

[Xerographica]

As much as I dislike contributing to this thread, I'm going to try and explain, in simple terms, why you are so very wrong. I am an investor. I hold investments in several mutual funds. The way mutual funds work, is that you give some money to some people who know how to make it turn into more money. Why don't I just pick the stocks myself, you might ask, and the reason is, that I don't know as much about the market as these professional guys do, and I have neither the time, or the inclination to learn about it.

The real way mutual funds work is that you can always, at any time, fire whoever is in charge of investing your money.  You want him fired so you fire him.  How absolutely moronic would it be if you had to collect 300 million signatures before you could fire your money manager?  Why should you have to convince anybody else if you're certain that you can get a better ROI elsewhere?  

Even the bible understands this really basic concept...The Parable of the Talents.  

I have absolutely no problem with congress...as long as people have the freedom to fire the heck out of them for any reason.  If congresspeople are truly providing an excellent ROI...then there's absolutely no reason that anybody would want to shop for themselves.  If numerous people do decide to shop for themselves...then it's doubtful that congresspeople are really providing an excellent ROI.

There are a bunch of people in the world who could give a rat's ass if the Amazon basin was turned into a parking lot, but that doesn't mean, that just because they are ignorant of the benefit of having the rain forest intact, INCLUDING the benefit to them, that they should be able to just say, "No, I don't want my taxes to help preserve the Amazon." There are way to many people who are too oblivious to reality to allow them to make these decisions.

Do you intentionally give your money to anybody who is too oblivious of reality?  If so, please give us their name.  

In case you missed it, the only reason you choose to give your money to somebody is because they are not oblivious to some aspect of your reality.  You give your money to Subway because they are not oblivious to your need for food.  You give your money to the car dealer because they are not oblivious to your need for transportation.  You give your money to your barber because he is not oblivious to your need for having a hair cut.  

Taxpayers make money by not being oblivious to other people's realities.  

If taxpayers could choose where their taxes go, and not "enough" taxpayers gave their money to the conservation of the Amazon rainforest, then the responsibility would be on you to share the information that would help them change their priorities.  

Right now I have information that leads me to believe that people are making a fundamental mistake by preventing themselves from shopping in the public sector.  But because I could be wrong...I solely rely on persuasion, rather than force, to show them the error of their ways.  Persuasion requires the sharing of information.  Force makes the sharing of information entirely unnecessary.

Nobody has a monopoly on information or reality...which is why persuasion is priceless.  It allows people to compare their information with your own.  Therefore, markets incorporate the maximum amount of information...which is exactly why we should create a market in the public sector.

[Jmpty]

Now THESE guys know where their taxes should go. I'll try to convince them that the rainforest is important to them. Nope.

[Damarcus]

One concern is that the wealthy will have too much influence.  They will spend their taxes on public goods that screw the middle class and poor.  This concern is ridiculous though because if a "public good" harms most of the public...then it really isn't a public good.  A public good is something that is largely beneficial.  And once people can shop for themselves in the public sector...then we'll clearly see the demand depth/breadth for each and every public good.  Therefore, if a public good only benefits the wealthy...this will become readily apparent...and the public good would be removed from the public sector.  The point of this survey is to determine where that "removal" threshold might be.  

The problem with your whole system is this bit here. If people decided that a "public good" was actually hurting most of the public, they'd get rid of it. This means people aren't really allowed to put their tax money wherever they want, they can only put it into programs that benefits society as a whole (not that this is a bad thing, it's just a lot more...socialist than most Americans would allow)

Also, what happens if no one donates money to important, but often neglected public goods? Such as healthcare, education and roads? Do we re-route funds to pay for those? or do we just start closing schools and hospitals?

The reason people don't get to choose where their tax money goes is because people are dumb. We make terrible decisions. I would much rather let some guy who (supposedly) knows what he's doing sort out the taxes, rather than Jimbob from down the road.