Wakeboarding Prisoner's Dilemma

     For Fall Break I went to Lake Anna to practice wakeboarding for the last time this year. When I went out Saturday morning, it was different than most wakeboard runs. Not because it was 48 degrees outside, but because my brother wasn't able to come. My brother and I both wakeboard a lot and whenever we practice we are always trying to one-up each other in the tricks we can perform. However, he snapped his ACL in half while wakeboarding a few weeks ago so he cannot practice until April. I was thinking about this as behind the boat and I realized I wasn't being as risky as usual because my brother was not there and because of a Prisoner's Dilemma.
     While practicing, you can wakeboard aggressively or more smoothly and relaxed. When I am with my brother, I want to make sure I look better than him, so I wakeboard aggressively. He attempts to be as good as me (though rarely does) so he also practices aggressively. However in practicing that way, falls often hurt more and injuries can sometimes happen (hence his ACL). So, the ideal situation would be if we both took it easily to reduce the risk of injury. However, the potential respect and admiration from our peers in the boat is so great, we are each incentivized to practice aggressively. As we do not usually wakeboard at the same time and wakeboarding aggressively is a dominant strategy, the result is that we both wakeboard aggressively which is an inefficient dominant strategy equilibrium. Mueller contends that in small groups this can be overcome through social pressure or deals, but to reason with my brother has high transaction costs and would likely not provide high marginal benefits. It is possible that the impact of the water knocked some sense into him, so hopefully after he is recovered next Spring he would be more willing to come to an agreement about how we will practice.

Public Choice, My Dear Watson

Sherlock Holmes is such a popular fictional character because of how differently he behaves from the average person. Sherlock Holmes cares little about the impressions others have of him (except when theatrically proving the police wrong with a solution to a case), and instead pursues private utility at all costs. Although some psychologists have described Sherlock Holmes as psychopathic (to which, in the modern-day television adaptation, Holmes responds that he is merely a high-functioning sociopath), perhaps he can be better described as an approximation of a perfectly rational, utility-maximizing individual for the purposes of economic modeling.

In the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson reflects upon Sherlock Holmes’s startling ignorance in many common fields of knowledge. Although Holmes knows the details of every murder committed in London in recent memory and can deduce the brand of cigar used by a suspect by glancing at an ashtray, he shows a perplexing dearth of knowledge in many other areas. The reader learns that Sherlock Holmes does not know that the earth travels around the sun, and also knows no information about philosophy or literature. Although this lack of knowledge is surprising for someone as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock actually seeks a rational level of ignorance. The following is a graph of Sherlock Holmes’s allocatively efficient level of ignorance for astronomy compared to that of the average population. 

To start, Holmes’s private marginal benefit of learning astronomy is lower than that of the average person. He cares very little about ever needing basic astronomy information for day-to-day conversation due to his diminished desire for social approval, and he is also certain he will not need to understand astronomy for his detective work. His private marginal cost of learning astronomy is higher than that of the average person as well, because the opportunity cost of maintaining his occupational reputation as genius private detective is advanced time spent researching specific subjects and developing his deductive reasoning ability. As a result, the allocatively efficient level of knowledge of astronomy for Sherlock Holmes is extremely low.

One of Sherlock Holmes's under-appreciated attributes is that he represents a utility-maximizing actor in an economic system. A world where everyone is a little more like Sherlock Holmes might be a less friendly place, but at least it would improve the applicability of economic models. 

Twitter Polls: Rational Ignorance Problem

Last week in one of my ECON elective courses there was a group presentation. Before the presentation began, a girl from the group projected that she had voter registration forms and we could "easily register, only spending a couple minutes after class" to do so. Immediately, I thought of how big of a problem this girl was going to cause for the county of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia. To illustrate this destruction in the making I will compare this to polls on Twitter.
Ever since Twitter has allowed users to create polls, I have been a rationally ignorant voter. I vote on every Twitter poll I see. It does not matter if I have absolutely no clue what the topic of the poll is, I will vote. The method of voting is so easy, the only cost that I incur from voting is the strength I use in my thumb to press which option I desire. The utility I get from pressing that random answer cannot get any easier to obtain. Every time I do this though, I am actually hurting the true effectiveness of said poll. You see, the costs of actually taking time to go look up what I need to know about said poll, or message the maker of the poll about the topic, is too high for me to do and still be able to gain utility from voting. Just like how I am voting on random twitter polls I see, many from people who I do not even know, this girl in my class was encouraging students who may not even be from Virginia or Charlottesville, to effect the outcome of the upcoming election. Many of us do not even know who is running or what topics of legislation the election is covering.
This is a classic example of why making voting for public offices "easier" actually conflicts with the desired social outcome that would benefit society the most. Johnson writes "Even if individuals could be driven to the polls by social pressures, by fines, or by 'costless' electronic voting, there is no assurance that those individuals who did vote would have sufficient knowledge to vote their own interests". I hope in the future this girl can also handout pamphlets or brochures that provide all the information needed to become knowledgable of the current election before she attempts to pressure or make easier this registration process to vote.

Median Voter Theory: Israel

Say what you wish about the current state of political affairs in both the US and the UK; it is certainly...messy.  Israel, however, may take the cake in the contest for most unsustainable political circumstances.  After two legislative elections within the span of six months, Israel is still without a functioning governing coalition. With the rise of the Blue and White party and the defection of a long-time coalition partner, PM Bibi Netanyahu is in the political fight of his life. As a third election looms in the horizon, dysfunctional government appears to be the new status quo for the foreseeable future. What insights can Downs' Median Voter theory offer in such a situation?

This model roughly demonstrates the current ideological spectrum of Israel and her political parties:

This model most closely resembles figure 7 of Downs' paper.  There exists a bimodal distribution of voters on the left and right, though more voters fall on the right. Though there are a number of small parties throughout the spectrum, they roughly group in coalitions concentrated on the left and right. Before the Blue and White party was formed, Likud was closest to the median voter. As predicted, they dominated elections for the last 20 years. To maintain power in government, however, Likud had to form coalitions with far-right, ultra-Orthadox parties. These far right parties have increasingly pulled Likud to the right, and subsequently further and further from the median voter. As Downs correctly predicted, a new party formed near the center and to the left of Likud. This "faction of desirous compromise" manifested as the Blue and White party, a centrist big-tent party, primed to gain voters at the expense of the Likud party.

The particular problem in this situation, however, is that while both parties are centered near the median voter, neither can get enough support from parties to the left or the right to form a governing coalition. As predicted, ideological purity is king in this political system. Far be it for either Likud or Blue and White to partner with the Arab parties. And good luck in getting the secularists to join the ultra-Orthodox in a government. As it sits now, those 61 seats seem all that more elusive for all parties involved. 

Perhaps, as has been rumored, a unity government may be the only way out of this political quagmire. 

Modern Beauty and the Prisoner's Dilemma

      In a feminist theory course last semester we discussed the tensions present in modern narratives on women’s liberation. While some hail individual choice and self-expression as the ultimate indication of an equal society, others recognize that although the power of decision is crucial for women, that does not indicate that all choices are feminist choices. Consider the topic of makeup, or plastic surgery. While we have come to a general conclusion that cosmetic enhancements may be a mode of self-expression that is powerful for the individual, that does not mean that there should not be serious considerations of the social environment that may put pressure on women to look a certain way.
I realize now that the conclusion I kept nearing last term was that makeup (or Botox, or plastic surgery) can likely create a prisoner’s dilemma. This is not a black and white situation, for I am not discussing the makeup artist but rather a woman who would rather not wear makeup but fears she must, for example in the workplace, to look presentable. The individual woman’s choice is based upon the choices of other individuals by which she is surrounded. Makeup, Botox, and plastic surgery are all time consuming, expensive, and range from being potentially harmful to the skin to dangerous if procedures go awry. Though this may seem simplistic, consider the idea that, to an extent, women have settled into a prisoner’s dilemma situation in which all are defecting to spend X minutes a day putting on makeup before work, but if no one did then no one else would feel as though they “have” to, and those minutes could be spent more freely. 
       The dominant strategy arises here because as less and less people wear makeup and we arrive at a point in which all women are wearing nothing on their face, then one woman would feel inclined to do so, as it would make her more attractive. Therefore, whether Person A chooses to wear makeup or not wear makeup, it is likely that Person B is better off wearing makeup, so we reach a state in which everyone may begin to follow suit. This same logic is applicable for plastic surgery or botox. This may result in other effects, such as the way our society accepts sexist ageism or the fact that cosmetic enhancements have been shown to increase popularity on dating apps such as BeautifulPeople. The consequences show this is something to consider.