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Four techniques of public policy

Suppose you have a situation where individual choices are suboptimal, both for that individual and for the group as a whole.  Exactly why the individual makes suboptimal choices isn’t immediately relevant for the moment.  It seems to me, that there are four broad approaches to “solving” this problem: a) an engineering approach; b) a government mandate; c) economic incentives; and d) a psychological approach.  The four approaches are not mutual exclusive and can even overlap, but they each bring a different mindset to the problem.  All four approaches can be taken to an absurd extreme.

To explain each of the four, an (admittedly pretty graphic) example may be useful.  Men seem, in general, to have a habit of spillage at public urinals – pee goes on the floor instead of the urinal.  This induces both private costs (increased health risks and the ‘ick’ factor of negotiating another guy’s floor-pee) and public costs (increase cleaning costs).

  • An engineering approach would be to design a better urinal to minimise spash-back.  An extreme engineering approach would not only do this, but also include sensors to detect when urine falls outside the catchment area and then activate an automatic (i.e. robotic) cleaning system.
  • A government mandate would make it illegal to spill your pee on the floor.  How extreme this is would depend on the enforcement mechanism.  A light-handed approach would pass the law and then do nothing to enforce it, similar to jay-walking.  A heavy-handed approach would hire a cop to occasionally watch men pee and arrest them if they spill, similar to most countries’ drug policy.  An extreme approach would have a government agent hold your penis to make sure that you don’t spill, similar to the Australian government’s enforcement of mandatory superannuation.
  • An economic incentive would impose a fine on men for spilling and/or give them a bonus payment for not spilling.  How extreme this measure is would depend on the size of the fine or the bonus.  Because this also has a need for enforcement (government-implemented or government-guaranteed), this can be thought of as a market-oriented government approach.
  • A psychological approach would seek to reframe the issue to influence the way that men make their choices.  For the urinal, it could be to make use of the fact that if you paint a fly in the urinal at the spot that minimises splash-back, the visual cue will cause men to aim at it and overall spillage will fall.  My mother did something similar when I was a kid.  She had five teenage boys living under her roof and not even making us clean the toilet seemed to stop the mess, so she put a ping-pong ball in the toilet (because it’s so light, it won’t flush down) and told us to aim at it.

So what’s my point?  Just this:  most people tend to focus on just one of the four approaches and think that it is the best way to solve every problem, when the truth is that different problems call for different responses and that the best strategy will usually employ several approaches.  In the case of spilling urine, the best strategy is probably a combination of an engineering and psychology, but in others a different combination may be optimal.  Don’t always think that your favourate approach is the best or only one.

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Understanding race relations in America

Now, I’m just a white guy from Australia who’s only visited the US a few times, so there’s a strong element of “What the hell would I know?”[*], but still … I suspect that if you want a quick, visual introduction to race relations and the issues facing non-whites in America, you would not do too badly by only watching three things:

[*] The answer, of course, is “probably not very much,” especially if you subscribe solely to ethnographic or other immersive techniques of sociological fact-finding, but since my wife grew up as an Hispanic immigrant in the (28% African-American, 6% Hispanic) state of Georgia, I work on the assumption that even if I have no clue, she’ll yell at me if I say something entirely stupid.

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*sigh* (Zimbabwe)

This is from The Independent. It’s a fairly short article, so I’ll include it in full (all emphasis is mine):

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday’s ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city’s Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.

One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers.”

Officially, the Chinese were visiting strategic locations such as border posts, key companies and state institutions, he said. But it is unclear why they were patrolling at such a sensitive time. They were supposed to stay five days, but left after three to travel to Masvingo, in the south.

China’s support for President Mugabe’s regime has been highlighted by the arrival in South Africa of a ship carrying a large cache of weapons destined for Zimbabwe’s armed forces. Dock workers in Durban refused to unload it.

The 300,000-strong South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said it would be “grossly irresponsible” to touch the cargo of ammunition, grenades and mortar rounds on board the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang anchored outside the port.

A Satawu spokesman Randall Howard said: “Our members employed at Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo, neither will any of our members in the truck-driving sector move this cargo by road. South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between Zanu-PF and the MDC.”

Three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and more than 3,000 mortar rounds and mortar tubes are among the cargo on the Chinese ship, according to copies of the inventory published by a South African newspaper.

According to Beeld, the documentation for the shipment was completed on 1 April, three days after the presidential vote.

Zimbabwe and China have close military ties. Three years ago, Mr Mugabe signed extensive trade pacts with the Chinese as part of the “Look East” policy forced on him by his ostracising by Western governments over human rights abuses. The deal gave the Chinese mineral and trade concessions in exchange for economic help.

The shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague called on David Miliband to demand a cessation of arms shipments.

A South African government spokesman Themba Maseko said it would be difficult to stop the shipment.

*sigh*

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Farm subsidies promote terrorism

Well, maybe not directly, but it bears thinking about. It’s not a new idea, either, but I thought I’d put it out there anyway …

US and European farm subsidies artificially suppress world crop prices by causing American and European farmers to produce more than they profitably otherwise could. By the World Bank’s estimates, the prices of course grains, rice and wheat would rise by between 4% and 7% relative to other prices if all subsidies and other impediments to trade were removed (hat tip: Dani Rodrik).

That means that farmers in places like Afghanistan turn to other crops like poppies (for heroin). Since drugs are illegal, the farmers can only sell their crops through black (well, in Afghanistan, grey) markets that are controlled, America tells us, by people who support and funnel profits to the Taliban and al-Qa’ida.

Those Afghani farmers don’t really care what they grow. They just want to make a profit, like anybody else. How do we know this? Because when the price of crops goes up for other reasons, they happily started switching to planting wheat:

In parts of Helmand Afghan farmers are this year sowing wheat instead of poppy – not because they have suddenly been converted to the argument that producing heroin is not in the national interest.

Market forces have been the deciding factor – with wheat prices doubling in the past year, and the street price of heroin falling, it is now more cost effective to grow wheat.

So there you have it. If America was serious about fighting drugs and terrorism, it would cut it’s farm subsidies.

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Non-geographic constituencies

The Australian House of Representatives has 150 members for a resident population of 21,268,746 (10 April 2008), or almost 142,000 people per representative. The US House of Representatives has 435 members for a resident population of 303,817,103 (10 April 2008), or almost 670,000 people per representative. The UK House of Commons has 646 members for a resident population of 60,587,000 (mid-2006), or almost 94,000 people per representative. The Canadian House of Commons has 308 members for a resident population of 33,231,725 (10 April 2008), or almost 108,000 people per representative.

Traditionally, which is to say always, the constituency of each representative or member of parliament has been defined geographically. That’s simple enough, but now that communication and identification technology has advanced to where it is today, they no longer need to be.

Members of the various lower houses of parliament/congress are meant to be representatives of their constituents, speaking on their behalf and seeking to act in their best interest. Before anybody mentions it, the Edmund Burke argument, that members of parliament ought to focus on the well-being of the nation as a whole, carries more strength in a unicameral parliament than it does in the constitutional arrangements of Australia, Canada and the USA where an upper-house exists with members sitting for longer terms so as – in principal, at least – to focus more on the issues more than the politics. It also seems to me that within her role as a member of parliament thinking of the good of the nation, a representative has a duty to pass on to the parliament the democratically valid views of her constituents, even if she ultimately votes in another direction.

By having electoral districts be geographically defined, we remove from the people the right to self-organise and they instead become passive receivers of groupings that are set down upon them. Unless you have an independent body to determine electoral boundaries, you therefore run the risk of gerrymandering (although whether that necessary causes polarisation is apparently debatable). Even if gerrymandering does not cause polarisation, the relevance of a geographically-defined groups is becoming less relevant as communication and transportation technologies improve. In a more globalised world where the economic fortunes of people are less tied to those of their neighbours, the issues of concern that people share will be less likely to be spatially concentrated.

My question, then, is this: What if 150,000 Australians were to voluntarily opt out of their resident electoral districts and form a non-geographically defined constituency with their own seat in the House of Representatives?

  • Individuals would only be permitted to be a member of one electoral constituency.
  • Everyone would be a part of a geographic district by default, but could change to a non-geographic grouping if they chose.
  • Even then, people would retain a geographical link to the legislature through the Senate.
  • The election of representatives from non-geographic constituencies would proceed just like any other seat in a general election; all of the various political parties would be free to offer candidates and to campaign in whatever way they saw fit.
  • By coming together around a common topic of concern, constituents guarantee that candidates will need to address that concern in their campaigns and that the winner will truly be their representative in parliament.

The idea isn’t entirely novel. Several countries allow for an expatriate electoral role so that non-resident citizens can still vote. These are usually tied back to a geographic district within the home country, but there’s no reason they have to be.

At a first glance, this might seem like a finely grained version of proportional representation. I guess that to a point it is, but since each constituency would still have elections, all parties would be able to put forward candidates and the decision process within each constituency would still be the same as within geographic districts (preferential voting in Australia, first-past-the-post in the UK and USA), it’s not.

It might also seem like this would just be formalised lobbying. To that I can only say: “Yes. So?” People are entitled to their views and in a democracy those views ought to be granted equal rights to be heard. Lobbyists are treated with such scorn today because they seek to obtain political influence beyond their individual vote. They exist, in part, because people do not have any real connection to their representatives.

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Argh! It’s all broken … (Updated)

I, perhaps foolishly, decided to upgrade to wordpress v 2.5. I’m almost there now, but I seem to have lost all my links and the styles are all out of whack. I’m afraid that you’ll all have to bear with me over the next couple of days while I get it clean again.

Update (9 April 2008):

Well, I think it’s all back up and running nicely again.  If anybody can’t see it properly, let me know.