My club ultimate frisbee team held a players' meeting to brainstorm a mission statement, which details the core values of an organization. Small groups created and nominated a mission statement, followed by a vote. However, the team lost interest, and we ended up with a short, uninspiring mission statement.
After reading Buchanan and Tullock's analysis on external and decision-making costs, I now understand why things turned south. Despite my excitement about it, the mission statement had little external costs on our players. Even if you disagreed with the values, it wouldn't immediately affect our organization. Furthermore, there were higher decision-making costs than I expected; players wanted to get home at 9pm on a Wednesday.
My teammates' rush to finish the process, even if no statement received a simple majority (K/N<0.5), is a rational choice to minimize the sum of the external and decision-making costs.
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