Any sufficiently rich, non-dictatorial rule system is manipulable. Not some such systems — all of them. The theorem guarantees that there exists some situation in which some agent can do better by acting contrary to the system’s intended purpose. Posts under this tag are about finding those situations, usually in places the rule designers didn’t think to look.
A fundamental consideration in decision- and policy-making is aggregation of competing/complementary goals. For example, consider the current debate about how to measure when the “border is secure” with respect to US immigration reform. (A nice, though short, piece alluding to these issues is here.) A recent GAO report discusses the state of border security, the variety … Read more
Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady. –Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV) Filibuster reform in the US Senate has once again begun to attract attention. In a nutshell, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) is—ahem—upset that—in his opinion, at least—Republican Senators are unreasonably holding up executive branch nominations out of either animus … Read more
The debate about gun control provides a great example of a collision between political issues and public policies. As I describe more below, most “political issues” are labels/shortcuts for describing preferences about multiple specific government policies/laws. The point of this post is that gun control, a political issue, is like a cookie. How I feel … Read more
Bad money drives out good. – Gresham’s Law Gresham’s law was coined (hahaha!) back when it was apparently okay to call things laws based on a hunch. Nonetheless, it has a solid theoretical foundation. To understand it, just consider how you would pay for things if gold and lead were both made legal tender at … Read more