Revealed Preferences (people are liars)

[Luxoris]

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So I'm going to choose to do something that I would prefer not to do? Tell me more.

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First, people sometimes have no preference and still take action.

Second, people's preferences are frequently formed on faulty information and therfore their actions don't represent the action they would take in their own self-interest.

Third, even when fully informed people sometimes act against their own preferences.

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I don't think you understand the word preference.

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I do, and believe you do. You just accept the fallacy that actions always reveal preferences.

they dont

[pvn]

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You are assuming that actions always are indicative of preferences, which is a core AC assumption that is not universally accepted.

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Do you have a better way? Mind reading, perhaps?

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It also ignores that more complete information might change people's preferences

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No it doesn't. Didn't you earlier accuse ACists of relying on assumptions of perfect information? Now you're trying to cricize them for NOT depending on perfect information? Which is it?

[owsley]

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phil, if what you are saying is true, why do states have such destructive results on society ?

edit- part of the whole point of AC is that these negative effects of government can be predicted. government will always seek more power, create false threats, perpetual warfare/welfare, etc.

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Of course, when Phil is ruling he will be able to avoid those faults.

[Phil153]

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And what happens after you "prove" that people's actions are not in line with their "true values and desires"? You fix this by forcing choices upon them for their own good. What other way are you going to fix this?

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This is correct, but only in certain areas. People can drink, and smoke, and waste their time, and associate with criminals, and undertake bad deals, and go bankrupt. The intervention "for their own good" only occurs in certain areas, and a weighting toward those areas which affect multiple people at once and have adverse social effects. Namely:

- Food & drug safety
- Policing
- Environmental protection and preservation
- National defense
- Fraud prevention
- Diplomacy
- Basic health care for the poor
- Basic education

Government doesn't do a perfect job on these. Far from it. But the system largely works, and that's good enough for me.

And it's hilarious to me to think that the same people who voted in George Bush will do a better job on these items than the government if working via individual choice.

[pvn]

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I'm disagreeing that their stupidity or laziness or lack of information reveal their true preferences. People are subject to numerous fallacies and irrationalities.

Let's take a few examples.

Lack of insight
- Nerd wants to get laid before he's 20. This is really, really important to him. However, he never approaches girls or tries to improve his social skills, because he's unable to understand the solid empirical link between doing this and getting laid.

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You're only looking at one side of the coin. You're ignoring his preferences when it comes to rejection.

He prefers, given his situation at the time he acted, to not approach girls rather than risk humiliation/rejection. THat risk outweighs the potential reward of scoring. Regardless of what he says. If the reward outweighed the risk in his mind, he would act accordingly.

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Lack of information
- A mother really doesn't want children to work in factories. If she saw children working, and knew the name of the company, she would be appalled and never buy their products again. However, she is unable to get information on any products produced in another country as they go through several sets of hands before ending up in her Walmart. Companies don't voluntarily disclose this information (or do so fraudulently) because it saves them a lot of money (which their shareholders want).

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Again, you're ignoring a big part of the equation.

She prefers to risk helping a poor family make more money rather than do the legwork required to find out for sure.

She wants more information with no more expense. But things don't work that way, and that exactly what the OP is getting at.

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Poor assessment of risk
AJ Green (part owner of Absolute) wants to be very wealthy and live an awesome life. He already has millions, and thinks he can get away with cheating people on his poker site which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten years. The maximum profit he can gain from cheating is a couple of million. Yet he cheats anyway. His desire for security and profit would make the rational choice not to cheat - and yet he did because of his terrible assessment of risk.

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He enjoys the psychic thrill of cheating. This argument means that any leisure activity is "irrational." You're reducing everything to a straight dollar equation, which is ironic considering that it's usually ACists who are accused of "worshipping" the dollar above all else.

[tame_deuces]

Yes it is all dandy. Until you figure out that a coercion-free society is a far fetch. Bystander effect, groupthink, Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, Philip Zimbardo - these are just a few keywords to wiki for too see why.

[pvn]

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Yes it is all dandy. Until you figure out that a coercion-free society is a far fetch. Bystander effect, groupthink, Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, Philip Zimbardo - these are just a few keywords to wiki for too see why.

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Groupthink. Interesting. Some bad people are out there, and they might hurt other people, so I can feel good about hurting other people myself!

[Phil153]

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He enjoys the psychic thrill of cheating. This argument means that any leisure activity is "irrational." You're reducing everything to a straight dollar equation, which is ironic considering that it's usually ACists who are accused of "worshipping" the dollar above all else.

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pvn,

You're missing the point, and making mine for me. It's often claimed in these debates that the forces of rationality will restrain people and companies from doing undesirable things and keep a lid on chaos, fraud, and predation. Examples of common AC claims:

- Companies wouldn't do that because they want to maintain a good reputation (assumption of economic rationality)

- Monopolies such as buying up all the roads or local water resources can't happen, because the person who owns the last bit of that resource will charge astronomical prices as it's worth so much (assumption of economic rationality, adequate information, freedom from duress, adequate prediction of value)

- Child rapists will be ostracized from society - so the child rape problem won't be any worse than it is now (too many assumptions to list)

You can't have it both ways.

Apart from that you're missing the broader point relevant to this thread that action and preference can be incongruous with the actions that a person would undertake with a clear head and proper information. The POTRIPPER account would never have pulled that stunt in the tournament if he had adequately assessed risk. He failed. Thus, his actions and preferences became incongruent.

[jogsxyz]

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I'm disagreeing that their stupidity or laziness or lack of information reveal their true preferences. People are subject to numerous fallacies and irrationalities.

Let's take a few examples.

Lack of insight
- Nerd wants to get laid before he's 20. This is really, really important to him. However, he never approaches girls or tries to improve his social skills, because he's unable to understand the solid empirical link between doing this and getting laid.


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Beauty and the Geek addresses this issue.

[pvn]

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You're missing the point, and making mine for me. It's often claimed in these debates that the forces of rationality will restrain people and companies from doing undesirable things and keep a lid on chaos, fraud, and predation.

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But nobody, even if they make these claims, claims that it will be 100% effective.

If anecdotal evidence is your "ZOMG GOTCHA" here, then you must agree that statism is a huge failure since every iteration of it has tried to stop murderers, and none has every succeeded. Ditto for theft. And fraud. And predation. And we don't even have to get into the cases where the state itself engages in those practices.

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Apart from that you're missing the broader point relevant to this thread that action and preference can be incongruous with the actions that a person would undertake with a clear head and proper information.

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But who is disputing this?