"JUST PICK ALREADY!"

My friends and I could not figure out where to get dinner last night. Asado had too long a wait, Virg couldn’t seat us together, and most didn’t want Canes. I weighed the external and decision-making costs in my head. 

First, the external costs. Many of us didn’t want Canes, and though we were hungry, we would spend dinner dreaming about Virg Mac N’ Cheese. The goal was to spend time together, and splitting the group at Virg would defeat that purpose, leaving everyone unhappy. Asado would mean waiting an hour for a table, making the group hungrier (crabbier) for longer.

Next, the decision-making costs. We were negotiating and complaining about each option outside in the cold. The more people we needed for agreement the longer we would debate. The longer we debated, the colder and hungrier we would become. Aiming for unanimity would increase the decision-making costs even if it would remove external costs. 

A simple-majority seemed preferable to a unanimous decision, lowering decision-making costs without pushing anyone’s external costs too high. Once half of the group agreed on Canes I yielded the fight for Asado and followed them. I may have been eating over-priced chicken tenders, but I got to see my friends and I (think) the group’s costs were minimized. 

*I love this stuff*

Costs of a Country Music Constitution

Over fall break two friends and I went to Nashville. With only four nights to explore Broadway, we wanted to maximize our time and explore a new place every night. Each person had different preferences about where to go, so we decided to let each person decide one night and leave the extra night flexible. At the time, we did not realize how extreme this decision rule was, as one person held all the power to decide our plans for the night. 

On my night I decided to bring the group to Luke Bryan’s, as he’s my favorite country singer. After waiting in the crowded line for forty minutes, my friends started to complain. A large external cost was being imposed on them. I thought about giving up on the line, but I thought through how high our decision-making costs now were. By abandoning the one-person decision rule, all three of us would now have to come to a consensus which could be an even bigger waste of time. To be honest, I also really wanted a picture inside Luke Bryan’s. People may call me stubborn, but I decided not to budge. After another ten minutes we finally got in! Looking back, our decision rule definitely did not minimize total costs. I’m sure my friends would’ve preferred a simple majority at that moment so they could override my decision.

The Lambeth 4593 Constitution

My apartment is in rough shape. Dishes fill up the sink, ginger ale cans take refuge on tables, and junk litters every corner of the living room. My three roommates and I epitomize the free rider problem -- we have very little incentive to clean up after ourselves when we can just bank on our brethren to do so for us. 

Starting this week, however, we free ride no longer. Over the break, trying to solve this problem and create a genius blog entry for my public choice economics class, I created the Lambeth 4593 Constitution. This clearly sets up the rules of the game for our apartment. While passage requires unanimity, our group of four members with similar preferences should have no time signing this into law. With three main chores to do (dishes, cleaning, and taking out trash), each roommate has a smaller yet clearly delineated responsibility with the added bonus of a break every four weeks. If they're slammed with exams or just don't want to do their role in a given week, they are free to trade or pay someone to take their responsibility, creating a market for each chore. Essentially, they can buy the right to free ride. And to disincentivize violating the constitution, a wannabe free rider faces a punishment decided by the three other members. 

Justin Verlander Hates the Borda Count (probably)

     Justin Verlander is one of baseball’s greatest all time pitchers— currently 41 years old and still pitching, he is one of the only active MLB players that is essentially guaranteed a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Shockingly enough, he has never made a sociopolitical commentary on the theory of the Borda Count. If he were to, however, I think he would be able to point out some of its major flaws.

    In 2016 Verlander had an amazing year and was the prime candidate to win the American League Cy Young award, given to the most outstanding pitcher in a season. The award is decided by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, where 30 writers pencil in their votes by way of the Borda Count. When the award was announced after the 2016 season, Verlander received the most first place votes (46%), and somehow lost. Two of the writers had completely left Verlander off of their ballot, resulting in Verlander losing by only 5 points (137-132), the closest race since 1970.

    This race exemplifies the prime flaw of the Borda Count which Mueller discusses; strategic voting. While Verlander was not unanimously the best pitcher in 2016, he objectively was a top 5 pitcher in the league. Knowing this, a writer who strongly wants somebody else to win the award would be incentivized to leave Verlander off their vote entirely even if it does not represent their true preferences. 

Borda saves movie night!

For the past couple weeks my friends and I have been trying to find a time for movie night, now that the weather is getting slightly colder. The issue is we can’t seem to settle on which movie to watch. I want to watch La La Land, someone else wants to watch Tron, a third wants to watch Twilight and so on. We'd been labouring over this decision for a few weeks, bickering over which would be more fun to watch, and it looked set to fall apart if we couldn't decide on a film soon.

Remembering that groups of individuals can display intransitive preferences, I thought this may be a good chance to try out one of the voting methods we learnt in class. I used this google form to set up a rank-choice voting procedure (may have accidentally included an extra column, so disregard column 5). I decided on the winner using the Borda Count Method, with each first place vote being worth 4 points, second place votes being worth 3 points and so on.

Under the Borda method, the winner was (drumroll)... La La Land!

Controlling the Agenda

This morning, I met up with two friends to go on a hike. It was a perfect day to spend outdoors, and we only had one issue–which hike to choose. The three options we had to choose from were Sharp Top, Devil’s Marbleyard, and Flat Top. Each of us preferred a hike different from the other, so I came up with a brilliant solution: we would all rank our preferences and then use a Borda count to determine the winner (note this is the point in the decision-making process when your non-Econ friends will call you weird). Below are our hike preferences, which I had to write on a napkin. 

Much to my dismay, I realized that in our situation a Borda count would not yield a Condorcet winner since one did not exist; we had intransitive preferences and a Condorcet paradox on our hands. We had three options, and all ranked them differently due to various reasons like length, difficulty and views. However, I quickly realized that with the power of agenda setting I could manipulate the outcome of the situation. Luckily enough, my friends were honest, and I did not have to worry about preference revelation. Since I knew that my 2nd choice would beat my 3rd choice, and my 1st choice would beat my 2nd choice, I set up two pairwise votes in that order. Using my knowledge of Economics, I was able to control the outcome and end up with my 1st choice hike, Sharp Top (which really was the best option). 

A Coxswain's Conundrum

In my position in rowing, that of a coxswain, athlete selection can be particularly difficult due to a lack of hard data about an individual coxswain's skill. To select our coxswains, we use a system of ranked choice voting nearly identical to that of the Commonwealth of Virginia, at least within each boat. Beginning with our fastest boat, rowers rank their preferences for their coxswains. Usually, a coxswain achieves a majority of votes but, if they do not, the coxswain with the fewest first or, sometimes, first and second place votes is eliminated, their votes are redistributed, and the votes are counted again, continuing until someone has a majority. Then, we move on to the next boat and do the same with the remaining coxswains, until each boat has selected a coxswain.

This system leads to a unique problem. The presence of many boats and, thus, many different ranked choice elections creates an incentive for coxswains to focus on winning over a majority of athletes in just one boat, rather than developing their overall skills and ability to work better with everyone on the team. Worsening this problem is the fact that boats tends to be made up of similar "types" of rowers with similar personalities who who work well together. If a group of five athletes (in a boat of eight) have a unique preference for, say, a particularly intense coxswain, they may be the only five rowers on the team to rank that coxswain highly, but that coxswain may gain an opportunity to race over others with more broad appeal. Then, when that coxswain has to practice or race with others down the line, they are less effective in doing so, as they've only really developed one part of their ability for the opportunity to race earlier on. 

I have proposed that, to limit this issue, we still select our coxswains with a ranked choice vote, but whether a coxswain races at all is decided by a vote that includes the entire team. Then, we should give each crew a choice on who from that pool they want in their boat, removing the incentive for coxswains to appeal to a narrow group for the opportunity to race in the first place. Thus, we would instead be incentivizing coxswains to work well with all rowers for the opportunity to race, and allow them to race with those who they work with best.

Curb Your Rationality

    I recently came across a clip from Larry David’s show Curb Your Enthusiasm. In the clip, Larry is waiting in line at the polls to vote for his friend, and makes a deal with another voter so neither of them have to wait in the line. They recognize that since they’re voting for opposing candidates, their votes cancel each other out. They make a deal to leave, allowing both individuals to essentially cast their votes without waiting in line. Later in the clip, Larry’s friend discovers he lost the election by one vote.

    The clip brings up a few things we’ve read and talked about in class; the cost of voting, social pressures, and the idea of trading votes being the main ones. The cost of voting is the cause of the video— two people recognize that waiting in line sucks, and they’d rather be elsewhere. Social pressures are present when Larry’s friends are mad at him for his decision, and the idea of trading votes by symmetrical abstention is clearly apparent. The irony in the clip is that even if the other voter were to return and vote, the probability of that one vote making a difference is statistically insignificant, except of course in the irrational world of Larry David.