Pro-Life Democrats and the Limits of the Big Tent

I like to start my mornings by listening to “The Daily,” a New York Times podcast that produces new shows every weekday morning. Last week, “The Daily” ran a show about Missouri Democrats and their struggle to retain power in a once-purple state. Missouri used to vote for a mix of Republicans and Democrats in statewide and national elections. In 2016, however, Democrats lost every statewide election except one, and now hold only 25% of seats in the legislature. Joan Barry, a long-time state legislator, recognized that many Republican-voting Missourians are pro-lifers whose political beliefs align closely with the Democratic party on all issues except abortion. This summer, she suggested that the Missouri Democratic Committee modify their platform to include pro-life Democrats. She “worried that the Democratic Party had moved too far left on abortion,” and hoped the change would bring the party back to the center.

Perhaps Barry is familiar with Harold Hotelling’s spatial model of competition. Hotelling argued that if voters were spaced linearly between two options, candidates would be forced to move towards the middle to gain more votes. This paints a rosy view of democracy as always tending towards a middle ground. If Hotelling’s idea applied to Missouri politics, we would expect that Barry’s move would bring the Democratic Party closer to the center on the abortion issue, expanding the Democratic tent and bringing in more voters.  The reaction to the changed platform from Missouri Democrats was swift and scathing: immediately, hundreds of progressives hopped on social media to express their anger. Many vowed to stop contributing financially to the party. Where did Hotelling and Barry go wrong? Hotelling’s model requires that voters would prefer whatever option is “closest” -- even extreme progressives or conservatives prefer centrist candidates who lean slightly to the left or right, respectively. According to our Downes reading, Arthur Smithies improved Hotelling’s model “by introducing elastic demand at each point on the scale” (117). When a party moves too far towards the center, it risks losing or “alienating” the voters at the tail end. This is what happened to Missouri’s Democratic Party. While Barry’s move could have brought in voters with moderate or conservative views on abortion, the change alienated those voters with views farther to the left. Ultimately, the Missouri Democratic Party changed their platform back, suggesting that even a slight shift towards the center lost the party more voters than it gained.

Median Smartphone Theorem

With the new releases of Apple phones/gadgets being so publicized, it had me thinking about how the new specifications or "specs" of the technologies are so similar to other leading brands. For example, take the Apple iPhones and the Samsung Galaxies. From my layman's perspective, it seems that these phones are increasingly similar, and I'm not the only one curious about the similarities - with Apple switching to the full touch screen model in the iPhone X, similar to that of the Samsung phones, and with the focus selling point being camera quality in both of the brands.

In class, we learned that the median voter theorem predicts candidates in a two party system to "race to the median" in order to capture the most votes. If we apply this to the smartphone industry and hold the hypothetical assumption that Apple and Samsung have a duopoly, we can see how the Hotelling model applies: when both firms have the objective to "win" the most consumers, they will want to appeal to the most people, causing them to race to the median in terms of focusing on similar specs that the consumers are looking for. In other words, the product differentiation decreases, just as Downs predicts party platforms to more or less converge in the middle.

At this point, the parties compete on giving the voters what they want; in the smartphone case, the firm that figures out what consumers value most will be able to dominate. Of course, the product specs are not the only thing that are at play which is what causes the product differentiation - for the smartphones, there are other effects like networks effects (having an iMessage with someone vs the "green messages," integration with other technologies like Macbooks) and application integrations (iOS vs Android). However, it would be an interesting take to see these other effects as a part of the "product" as both firms strive to offer similar integrations within their operating systems, resulting in similar technologies overall.

The Burdens of External Costs

Fun fact: I am on the UVA Mock Trial team.

We travel across the country competing against the best schools in the nation. Our trials can be about anything from bribery to copyright infringement to murder. In any given round, we represent attorneys and witnesses for the prosecution/plaintiff and the defense—using case facts to build legal arguments. Over the years, I've seen that in both civil and criminal trials, unanimity amongst jurors is required to find a defendant guilty. But what differs between civil and criminal trials is something called the burden of proof. Think of this as a measure of how certain a juror has to be of the defendant’s guilt. In criminal trials, the prosecution must prove the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—meaning that jurors have to be absolutely certain of the defendant’s guilt in order to convict. But in civil cases, the burden is a preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not—51%). This burden directly effects how we construct our legal arguments.

But why are the burdens different? The disparity in the external costs are to blame. To ground this in the analysis we walked through in class, its helpful to think of the juror's decision making cost as a constant as the jurors aren’t being effected by the outcome.  But in this example instead of N_a* being the number of voters, it represents the certainty a juror has in the defendant’s guilt. The external cost curve varies between civil and criminal cases. The external costs of a guilty verdict in a criminal case are higher, meaning that the N­_a* is larger—just as it would be if we were ratifying a constitutional amendment. 

Think about it. The consequence of being found guilty for a crime is a jail time—a loss of someone’s liberty (and their right to vote #electionseason). Whereas the consequence of being found liable for a civil tort is (usually) a monetary cost. A loss of one’s freedom and the repercussions of being convicted of a crime are significantly higher than paying (even the largest of) fines. Money is something that can be regained over time—even prisoners are paid for labor. So in civil cases with lower external costs, N_a* doesn’t have to be maxed out. But one’s liberty is nearly, if not entirely suspended in prison. So, when making the decision to take someone’s freedom we want to make sure that jurors don’t have a semblance of doubt in the person’s guilt. Beyond a reasonable doubt doesn’t mean doubting reason—but it does call for certainty and a maximized N­_a*.

Venezuela's Suboptimal Production

There is no question that Venezuelans are trying to leave Venezuela fast, where “tens of thousands cross the border into Colombia each day”.  People leave everything behind including their homes, their cars, and even their jobs all in the hopes of obtaining a dignified quality of life in neighboring countries. There is clearly a high cost related to leaving Venezuela due to forced migration, and for those who try to sell assets before the big move, they quickly find out their assets are worthless due to hyperinflation. The more Venezuelans leave the country, the easier the move seems but unfortunately this is not true. One would think that the opportunity cost of leaving would decrease as more people leave the country, but there is a high cost related to seeing a country collapse as a result of suboptimal production of goods and services. There is the need to leave but the desire to stay and see the country prosper.

If we were to look at Venezuela as a firm, forced migration to neighboring countries has imposed a negative externality of production on Venezuela. There is a clear brain drain and capital flight as a result of people leaving the country. The more Venezuelans leave the country means unattended production facilities are expropriated by the government who then appoint unexperienced producers as new facility leaders. The marginal social cost is greater than the marginal private cost where in return, this shift causes suboptimal production of goods and services which are below the allocative efficient quantity and is one reason for the collapse of the economy.

For the people leaving however, this is another story; Venezuelans leave in search for a better life into the known because marginal benefit of leaving is greater than marginal cost of staying. The search for a new life can be seen as a positive externality of consumption on the Venezuelans who are leaving since in their mind, nothing can be as bad as the life they were having in Venezuela, which is essentially what fuels the act of forced migration. In union, through moral support the more people leave together means the marginal social benefit will be greater than the marginal private benefit. From this analysis one could say that there is an underproduction of satisfied Venezuelans in the country which has led to an overproduction of Venezuelans migrating to neighboring countries.

Gun Control from Maslow's Perspective

This weekend, I attended the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative University in Chicago, where Chelsea Clinton moderated a panel on gun control. The panel included Sarah Chadwick, Founder of March for Our Lives, and Nza-Ari Khepra, Founder and Co-Creator of Project Orange Tree and Wear Orange, among others. Over the course of the panel, the conversation took an interesting turn. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Plenzler, activist with #VetsforGunReform, spoke of fear, and the fact that in many inner-city communities, residents feel the need to carry guns for self defense.

He mentioned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a known psychological phenomenon stating that people need simple things like shelter, food, and safety before they can realize their full potential. He spoke of the irony of this situation in which people are crippled by lack of safety, prompting them to carry guns, which then of course leads to the perpetuation of an unsafe environment where guns abound. I couldn’t help but infer that, at least from this perspective, the complex issue of gun control is reduced to a classic prisoner’s dilemma. 

Consider a highly simplified situation focusing on just two residents of a certain neighborhood, Resident A and Resident B. Just as in a typical prisoner’s dilemma set-up, there are four potential scenarios: both carry guns, neither carries a gun, Resident A carries a gun and B does not, or Resident B carries a gun and A does not. The optimal choice of two residents in such a situation would be for neither to carry a gun. If Resident A doesn’t have a gun, Resident B doesn’t need one for self-defense because there is no threat to his/her safety by Resident A, and vice versa. This way the residents would be able to spend their time focusing on the higher strata of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, such as relationships, creativity, and self-actualization.

However, safety in the world as we know it is based not on the simple trusting relationship between two residents, but rather the complex dynamic of large groups of people and therefore the potential for danger from many fronts, and so the current Nash equilibrium is for all parties to carry guns, perpetuating fear and a vicious cycle. Until we find a way to increase trust in these communities and therefore reduce the very need for guns themselves, gun purchases will continue to stagnate. What’s more, without a decrease in the magnitude of overall gun sales, it will be continually difficult to regulate illegal gun sales, an unfortunate negative externality perpetuating gun violence on other fronts. Chelsea, maybe you and Maslow can solve this one… 

Hotelling in Death Valley

      This weekend, I ventured into the absolutely insane world of the tailgating scene of Louisiana State University to visit some friends during their Homecoming Weekend. This unbelievable scene, affectionately referred to as "Death Valley", has recently seen major changes as the university has cracked down on the locations of fraternity tailgates.
       Now that individual fraternities are unable to host tailgate festivities within their own houses or inside the perimeter of the actual stadium, there is a mad dash for fraternities to capture the optimal tailgate plot that can capture the biggest share of the tailgate-goer market. The plots right outside the stadium sit right in the middle of the consumer market, with LSU student apartments to the east and LSU dormitories to the west. Right in the heart of Death Valley, Hotelling's law seen in "Stability in Competition" holds true in that the different fraternities "selling" mostly homogenous products (alcohol and music) end up moving closer and closer to the plots just outside the entrance of the stadium, so that they may capture more college students "consuming" their fraternity's tailgate experience.
       However, due to the conglomeration of fraternity tents side by side to one another and the lack of differentiation between products, consumers on their way to the football game freely flow through what seems like a mere block-long tailgate. This causes the plot directly closest to the stadium to be the optimal location, thus capturing the biggest amount of tailgate-goers and therefore achieving the coveted tailgate "buzz".

Downs and pre-existing conditions

Recent Washington Post and New York Times articles profiled the trend of Republican lawmakers and candidates in difficult elections to come out in support of coverage for pre-existing conditions. These include Josh Hawley, running for Senate in Missouri, who brought a lawsuit against the ACA and Dana Rohrabacher, running for re-election in CA-48 who voted for the AHCA (which would have effectively repealed the ACA and its mandate to cover pre-existing conditions). This dichotomy between past actions and current policies of these Republican politicians may point to political maneuvering with the aim of winning votes by (1) discouraging rational voting or (2) by changing policy positions.

In Downs’ The Statics and Dynamics of Party Ideologies, the author describes how in a two party system, parties have an incentive to be ambiguous about their platforms, in order to discourage rational voting. This is because when voters perceive both parties as having similar platforms, voters have a more difficult time determining actual policy differentiation, and thus often make decisions based on other factors. Further, liberal voters may interpret a candidate’s stance in favor of coverage for pre-existing conditions as closer to their own policy preference (more regulation of healthcare) while conservatives may take a candidate’s past actions into account when considering the candidate (support for pre-existing conditions but not increased regulation on the whole), thus widening the candidate’s net of appeal along the spectrum. When Republicans attempt to make their positions on healthcare more similar to the position of Democrats by coming out in support of pre-existing conditions, it makes voters choose their candidates based on different issues or personal qualities, or candidate preferences.

Similarly, Downs notes the tendency of parties to change their policy platforms in order to appeal to more voters. In a two party system with a central mode (a third of Americans identify as moderate), this may lead to parties shifting some policies towards the center. Indeed, three quarters of Americans believe insurance companies should not have a right to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. This number includes 75% of independents and 58% of Republicans. Because of this, there is less danger of alienation of extreme voters if republicans were to move left (more government regulation) on healthcare.

Nobody votes, together

In majoritarian two-party elections, rather than tallying the total votes received by either candidate, we could consider the margin by which one candidate surpasses the other. In that sense, you can look at each vote up to that margin as “cancelling out” a vote for the other party. For example, consider an election between two candidates, A and B, where I am dead set on voting for candidate B while my roommate is a fervent supporter of candidate A. For whatever reason, we might both choose to shoulder the costs associated with voting for our preferred candidate. The issue with this arrangement is that we essentially cancel each other’s votes out — the election would have the same outcome if we both abstained. Knowing this, I could propose that we both stay home and watch a movie together, avoiding the costs while still achieving the same outcome.

Expanding this logic to a macro level, elections can be thought of as a prisoner’s dilemma between two blocs of voters (e.g. Democrats and Republicans). If every voter in the smaller constituency matches up with voters in the larger constituency and mutually agree to abstain, we arrive at a cooperative equilibrium that arrives at the same electoral result, while avoiding a majority of the costs. Note that from the cooperative cell, each has an incentive to unilaterally defect — so abstention contracts must be enforceable, otherwise the game will reach a Nash equilibrium at (Defect, Defect), even if everyone would be made better off by mutual abstention.

With the power of the internet, an arrangement like this could actually be feasible (similar to vote trading) by matching strangers with opposing politics (though enforceability would be a problem). In the case where the only benefits derived from voting are from the probability of determining the outcome, the costs associated with voting are significant, and abstention contracts are enforceable, “mutual abstention” could minimize needless costs imposed on voters (and minimize the total number of votes cast). In the extreme case with full participation and information, every election would be won 1 vote to 0, decided by the only person to cast a ballot.

Game Day Externalities

Last Friday, I drove home from McDonald’s at 11pm to find no parking by my apartment. Our apartment parking lot does not require a permit, but I almost never had any trouble finding a spot in the past year I’ve had my car at school. I drove up and down JPA to look for a spot (which there was none) and ended up parking in the Student Health lot, a fifteen minute walk from my apartment.

You see, last Saturday was a football game day, and on game days, street parking is not allowed on one side of JPA. I would say this is a negative production externality because it is the university that hosts these games and creates these policies, considering only their marginal private costs of reserving half of JPA without considering the marginal social costs of the inconvenience to all the residents on JPA. Every home game day, people who normally park on the street due to parking lot overflows must find parking elsewhere, or else get towed.

There are also negative consumption externalities that result from all the spectators that come support UVA football, considering only their marginal private benefit of enjoying the sport and spirit and not the marginal social benefit that accounts for the marginal damage that arise to those that live by the stadium. The increased number of people in town create traffic and noise that affects people like me, who don't watch the games and just want to be able to carry out their regular Saturday routine each week. Every game day, I debate whether or not it is worth trying to leave Grounds to get some groceries or study at a cafe because I know it will take much longer to get there and back. Sometimes, I can’t even get back to my apartment without a piece of mail proving my residence there! This isn’t a unique experience; DukeToday published an article warning people of the traffic for one of their games earlier this season. This article even discusses the increased danger of driving on college football game days due to the increased traffic and drinking.

Unfortunately, there is a lack of property rights in this situation that deems many solutions impractical. Neither the visitors nor the tenants own the roads in Charlottesville in order to internalize these negative externalities on parking and traffic. I've decided that although I recognize these externalities that negatively affect me, this is something I can deal with for the handful of home games left in my college career.

Hoos Driving, Hoos Riding, Hoos Clubbing?

Many UVA students are aware of the Facebook Group, "Hoos Driving, Hoos Riding." I personally am a member of the general group as well as the "NOVA" specific group. In a nutshell, they are forums where members of the group may post to either ask for a ride or announce that they are willing to drive on a specific date/time/place - it's a market for informal ridesharing. Once users match themselves accordingly by either looking through the posts themselves or having helpful friends "tag" them in comment sections, the two parties agree upon a time and place, and upon a "price." The price is typically compensation paid to the driver, usually for gas.

While there are many aspects to pick at here, such as how users match themselves (are certain posts more attractive than others?) or how price can be negotiated (on long weekends, are the drivers able to charge higher prices and still have riders?) I'd like to focus on entry into the market in the first place. I rarely post to ask for a ride and never announce when I could offer a ride: I usually exhaust all possible avenues where I could ask a friend for a ride when I am in need, with the full intention of paying them for gas, whereas I will offer a ride casually to a friend and expect no compensation in return. When considering the amount of people who are constantly looking for a ride to northern Virginia and the price I could charge, my non-announcement is not rational. Why would I rather not enter the ride market and gain money than remain silent and potentially drive someone who I don't let pay me nearly as much as the prices in the Facebook Group?

Personally, I enjoy having company in the car when I drive the 2 hours back to NOVA, but I would much rather have a friend that I am comfortable making conversation with for two hours. Essentially, this would mean that I am valuing the friend and their company at the price that I could post for in the group. If we frame it as in Buchanan's Club Theory, we see that for me, the optimal number of ride sharers is based not only on the physical number of people, but also on my emotional proximity to them. My utility in using this ridesharing situation increases as I have a friend in the car (either riding or driving) and decreases as it gets too crowded. Perhaps the "membership fee" into this club is friendship itself, and everyone who is connected in the Facebook Group feels this to different degrees - after all, we're all Hoos, which is an exclusive club in itself.