SocialScience

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem In the social sciences, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods (such as public roads or hospitals), or services of a communal nature do not pay for them or under-pay. Free riders are a problem because while not paying for the good (either directly through fees or tolls or indirectly through taxes), they may continue to access or use it. Thus, the good may be under-produced, overused or degraded. Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature, the presence of free-riders cause this prosocial behaviour to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem. The free-rider problem in social science is the question of how to limit free riding and its negative effects in these situations. Such an example is the free-rider problem of when property rights are not clearly defined and imposed. The free-rider problem is common with public goods which are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Non-excludable means that non-payers cannot be stopped from getting use of or benefits from the good. Non-rival consumption stipulates that the use of a good or service by one consumer, does not reduce its availability for another consumer. These characteristics of a public good results in there being little incentive for consumers to contribute to a collective resource as they enjoy its benefits. A free rider may enjoy a non-excludable and non-rivalrous good such as a government-provided road system without contributing to paying for it. Another example is if a coastal town builds a lighthouse, ships from many regions and countries will benefit from it, even though they are not contributing to its costs, and are thus "free riding" on the navigation aid. A third example of non-excludable and non-rivalrous consumption would be a crowd watching fireworks. The number of viewers, whether they paid for the entertainment or not, does not diminish the fireworks as a resource. In each of these examples, the cost of excluding non-payers would be prohibitive, while the collective consumption of the resource does not decrease how much is available. Although the term "free rider" was first used in economic theory of public goods, similar concepts have been applied to other contexts, including collective bargaining, antitrust law, psychology, political science, and vaccines. For example, some individuals in a team or community may reduce their contributions or performance if they believe that one or more other members of the group may free ride.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it. A good is considered non-rivalrous or non-rival if, for any level of production, the cost of providing it to a marginal (additional) individual is zero. A good is "anti-rivalrous" and "inclusive" if each person benefits more when other people consume it. A good can be placed along a continuum from rivalrous through non-rivalrous to anti-rivalrous. The distinction between rivalrous and non-rivalrous is sometimes referred to as jointness of supply or subtractable or non-subtractable. Economist Paul Samuelson made the distinction between private and public goods in 1954 by introducing the concept of nonrival consumption. Economist Richard Musgrave followed on and added rivalry and excludability as criteria for defining consumption goods in 1959 and 1969.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking Rent-seeking is the effort to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth-creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline. Attempts at capture of regulatory agencies to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their uncorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior. Part 1. Description. The term rent-seeking was coined by the British 19th-century economist David Ricardo, but only became the subject of durable interest among economists and political scientists more than a century later after the publication of two influential papers on the topic by Gordon Tullock in 1967, and Anne Krueger in 1976. The word "rent" does not refer specifically to payment on a lease but rather to Adam Smith's division of incomes into profit, wage, and rent. The origin of the term refers to gaining control of land or other natural resources. Georgist economic theory describes rent-seeking in terms of land rent, where the value of land largely comes from government infrastructure and services (e.g. roads, public schools, maintenance of peace and order, etc.) and the community in general, rather than from the actions of any given landowner, in their role as mere titleholder. This role must be separated from the role of a property developer, which need not be the same person. Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. In many market-driven economies, much of the competition for rents is legal, regardless of harm it may do to an economy . However, various rent-seeking behaviors are illegal, mostly through bribery of local and federal politicians, or corruption. Rent-seeking is distinguished in theory from profit-seeking, in which entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions. Profit-seeking in this sense is the creation of wealth, while rent-seeking is "profiteering" by using social institutions, such as the power of the state, to redistribute wealth among different groups without creating new wealth. In a practical context, income obtained through rent-seeking may contribute to profits in the standard, accounting sense of the word. Part 1.1. Tullock paradox. The Tullock paradox is the apparent paradox, described by economist Gordon Tullock, on the low costs of rent-seeking relative to the gains from rent-seeking. The paradox is that rent-seekers wanting political favors can bribe politicians at a cost much lower than the value of the favor to the rent-seeker. For instance, a rent seeker who hopes to gain a billion dollars from a particular political policy may need to bribe politicians with merely ten million dollars, which is about 1% of the gain to the rent-seeker. Luigi Zingales frames it by asking, "Why is there so little money in politics?" because a naïve model of political bribery and/or campaign spending should result in beneficiaries of government subsidies being willing to spend an amount up to the value of the subsidies themselves, when in fact only a small fraction of that is spent. Possible explanations: Several possible explanations have been offered for the Tullock paradox: Voters may punish politicians who take large bribes, or live lavish lifestyles. This makes it hard for politicians to demand large bribes from rent-seekers. Competition between different politicians eager to offer favors to rent-seekers may bid down the cost of rent-seeking. Lack of trust between the rent-seekers and the politicians, due to the inherently underhanded nature of the deal and the unavailability of both legal recourse and reputational incentives to enforce compliance, pushes down the price that politicians can demand for favors. Rent-seekers can use a small part of the benefit gained to make contributions to the politicians who provided enabling legislation. Part 1.2. Examples. The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a property owner who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The owner has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. [Continue on Wikipedia]

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial-ethnic_socialization Racial-ethnic socialization (RES or R/E) describes the developmental processes by which children acquire the behaviors, perceptions, values, and attitudes of an ethnic group, and come to see themselves and others as members of the group. In a multiracial country like the United States, the phenomenon of minority parents "helping children understand their race/ethnicity and cope effectively with discrimination" is widely seen. In African American communities, a common manifestation of this is "The Talk", an explanation of the realistic dangers children and young adults face due to racism or unjust treatment from authority figures, law enforcement or other parties.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_plunder Legal plunder is a pejorative term used in right-libertarian thought to describe the act of using the law to redistribute wealth. This was coined by Frédéric Bastiat, most famously in his 1850 book The Law. Right-libertarians have described many actions of governments as "legal plunder", including taxation, protectionism, and eminent domain. Frédéric Bastiat advocated that the law should only serve to implement what he believed were preexisting natural rights: his person, liberty, and property. According to Bastiat, legal plunder is when the law "takes from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what does not belong to them." Bastiat gave many examples of what he considered to be legal plunder: Now, legal plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of plans for organization; tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities, encouragements, progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to instruments of labor, gratuity of credit, etc., etc. And it is all these plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder, that takes the name of socialism. — Frédéric Bastiat, The Law 1850

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaming_the_system Gaming the system (also rigging, abusing, cheating, milking, playing, working, or breaking the system, or gaming or bending the rules) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system to, instead, manipulate the system for a desired outcome. According to James Rieley, a British advisor to CEOs and an author, structures in companies and organizations (both explicit and implicit policies and procedures, stated goals, and mental models) drive behaviors that are detrimental to long-term organizational success and stifle competition. For some, error is the essence of gaming the system, in which a gap in protocol allows for errant practices that lead to unintended results. Although the term generally carries negative connotations, gaming the system can be used for benign purposes in the undermining and dismantling of corrupt or oppressive organizations.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism Cronyism is the practice of partiality in awarding jobs and other advantages to friends or trusted colleagues, especially in politics and between politicians and supportive organizations. For instance, this includes appointing "cronies" to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications; this is in contrast to meritocracy, in which appointments are made purely on qualification. Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary (such as an appointee) are in social or business contact. Often, the appointer needs support in their own proposal, job, or position of authority, and for this reason, the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken their proposals, vote against issues, or express views contrary to those of the appointer. Politically, "cronyism" is derogatorily used to imply buying and selling favors, such as: votes in legislative bodies, doing favors to organizations, giving desirable ambassadorships to exotic places, etc. Whereas cronyism refers to partiality to a partner or friend, nepotism is the granting of favor to relatives.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism Crony capitalism is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of free enterprise, but rather as a return on money amassed through collusion between a business class and the political class. This is often achieved by the manipulation of relationships with state power by business interests rather than unfettered competition in obtaining permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other forms of state intervention over resources where business interests exercise undue influence over the state's deployment of public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works. Money is then made not merely by making a profit in the market, but through profiteering by rent seeking using this monopoly or oligopoly. Entrepreneurship and innovative practices which seek to reward risk are stifled since the value-added is little by crony businesses, as hardly anything of significant value is created by them, with transactions taking the form of trading. Crony capitalism spills over into the government, the politics, and the media, when this nexus distorts the economy and affects society to an extent it corrupts public-serving economic, political, and social ideals.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_building Agenda building describes the ongoing process by which various groups attempt to transfer their interests to be the interests of public policymakers.Conceptualized as a political science theory by Cobb and Elder in 1971, "the agenda-building perspective...alerts us to the importance of the environing social processes in determining what occurs at the decision-making stage and what types of policy outcomes will be produced.” It focuses on the relationship between society and policy maker. Classic democratic theory focused on the assumption that calls on “public policymakers to advance the interests of civically engaged constituents, by an autonomous press” (i.e. classic theory focuses on the policy makers and media) however, it failed to account for points at which larger society of stakeholders could define the range of alternatives available for policy making.

Article made on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation. The law was named in 1860 by economist Henry Dunning Macleod after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), an English financier during the Tudor dynasty. Gresham had urged Queen Elizabeth to restore confidence in then-debased English currency. The concept was known centuries earlier in classical Antiquity and in medieval Europe, the Middle East and China. 1. "Good money" and "bad money". Under Gresham's Law, "good money" is money that shows little difference between its nominal value (the face value of the coin) and its commodity value (the value of the metal of which it is made, often precious metals, nickel, or copper). In the absence of legal-tender laws, metal coin money will freely exchange at somewhat above bullion market value. This may be observed in bullion coins such as the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, the South African Krugerrand, the American Gold Eagle, or even the silver Maria Theresa thaler (Austria) and the Libertad (Mexico). Coins of this type are of a known purity and are in a convenient form to handle. People prefer trading in coins rather than in anonymous hunks of precious metal, so they attribute more value to coins of equal weight. The price spread between face value and commodity value is called seigniorage. As some coins do not circulate, remaining in the possession of coin collectors, this can increase demand for coinage. On the other hand, bad money is money that has a commodity value considerably lower than its face value and is in circulation along with good money, where both forms are required to be accepted at equal value as legal tender. In Gresham's day, bad money included any coin that had been debased. Debasement was often done by the issuing body, where less than the officially specified amount of precious metal was contained in an issue of coinage, usually by alloying it with a base metal. The public could also debase coins, usually by clipping or scraping off small portions of the precious metal, also known as "stemming" (reeded edges on coins were intended to make clipping evident). Other examples of bad money include counterfeit coins made from base metal. Today virtually all circulating coins are made from base metals, known as fiat money. While virtually all contemporary coinage is composed solely of base metals, during certain contemporary, 21st century years in which copper values were relatively high, at least one common coin (the U.S. nickel) still maintained "good money" status (largely depending on market rates). In the case of clipped, scraped, or counterfeit coins, the commodity value was reduced by fraud, as the face value remains at the previous higher level. On the other hand, with a coinage debased by a government issuer, the commodity value of the coinage was often reduced quite openly, while the face value of the debased coins was held at the higher level by legal tender laws. 2. Examples. Silver coins were widely circulated in Canada (until 1968) and in the United States (until 1964 for dimes and quarters and 1970 for half-dollars) when the Coinage Act of 1965 was passed. These countries debased their coins by switching to cheaper metals thereby inflating the new debased currency in relation to the supply of the former silver coins. The silver coins disappeared from circulation as citizens retained them to capture the steady current and future intrinsic value of the metal content over the newly inflated and therefore devalued coins, using the newer coins in daily transactions. The same process occurs today with the copper content of coins such as the pre-1997 Canadian penny, the pre-1982 United States penny and the pre-1992 UK bronze pennies and two pence. This also occurred even with coins made of less expensive metals such as steel in India. 3. Theory. The law states that any circulating currency consisting of both "good" and "bad" money (both forms required to be accepted at equal value under legal tender law) quickly becomes dominated by the "bad" money. This is because people spending money will hand over the "bad" coins rather than the "good" ones, keeping the "good" ones for themselves. Legal tender laws act as a form of price control. In such a case, the intrinsically less valuable money is preferred in exchange, because people prefer to save the intrinsically more valuable money. Consider a customer purchasing an item which costs five pence, who possesses several silver sixpence coins. Some of these coins are more debased, while others are less so – but legally, they are all mandated to be of equal value. [Continue on Wikipedia]

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism In social psychology, collective narcissism (or group narcissism) is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by religion, social class, race, political stance, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism extends this concept to similar excessively high opinions of a person's social group, and suggests that a group can function as a narcissistic entity. Collective narcissism is related to ethnocentrism. While ethnocentrism is an assertion of the ingroup's supremacy, collective narcissism is a self-defensive tendency to invest unfulfilled self-entitlement into a belief about ingroup's uniqueness and greatness. Thus, the ingroup is expected to become a vehicle of actualization of frustrated self-entitlement. In addition, ethnocentrism primarily focuses on self-centeredness at an ethnic or cultural level, while collective narcissism is extended to any type of ingroup. When applied to a national group, collective narcissism is similar to nationalism: a desire for national supremacy. Collective narcissism is associated with intergroup hostility.

Article from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_irrationality The concept known as rational irrationality was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior (particularly in the realms of religion and politics) with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter. The original purpose of the concept was to explain how (allegedly) detrimental policies could be implemented in a democracy, and, unlike conventional public choice theory, Caplan posited that bad policies were selected by voters themselves. The theory has also been embraced by the ethical intuitionist philosopher Michael Huemer as an explanation for irrationality in politics. The theory has also been applied to explain religious belief. Part 1. Theory. Part 1.1. Two types of rationality, and preferences over beliefs. Caplan posits that there are two types of rationality: Epistemic rationality, which roughly consists of forming beliefs in truth-conducive ways, making reasonable efforts to avoid fallacious reasoning, and keeping an open mind for new evidence. Instrumental rationality, which involves choosing the most comprehensively effective means to attain one's actual goals, given one's actual beliefs. Rational irrationality describes a situation in which it is instrumentally rational for an actor to be epistemically irrational. Caplan argues that rational irrationality is more likely in situations in which: people have preferences over beliefs, i.e., some kinds of beliefs are more appealing than others and; the marginal cost to an individual of holding an erroneous (or irrational) belief is low. In the framework of neoclassical economics, Caplan posits that there is a demand for irrationality. A person's demand curve describes the amount of irrationality that the person is willing to tolerate at any given cost of irrationality. By the law of demand, the lower the cost of irrationality, the higher the demand for it. When the cost of error is effectively zero, a person's demand for irrationality is high. Part 1.2. Rational irrationality versus doublethink. Rational irrationality is not doublethink and does not state that the individual deliberately chooses to believe something he or she knows to be false. Rather, the theory is that when the costs of having erroneous beliefs are low, people relax their intellectual standards and allow themselves to be more easily influenced by fallacious reasoning, cognitive biases, and emotional appeals. In other words, people do not deliberately seek to believe false things but stop putting in the intellectual effort to be open to evidence that may contradict their beliefs. Part 1.3. Sources of preferences over beliefs. For rational irrationality to exist, people must have preferences over beliefs: certain beliefs must be appealing to people for reasons other than their truth value. In an essay on irrationality in politics Michael Huemer identifies some possible sources of preferences over beliefs: Self-interested bias: People tend to hold beliefs that, if generally accepted, would benefit themselves or the group with whom they identify. Self-interested bias is complicated by the fact that people may identify with groups to which they do not belong, but feel good about assuming that identity. Beliefs as self-image constructors: People prefer to hold beliefs that best fit with the images of themselves that they want to adopt and to project. Beliefs as tools of social bonding: People prefer to hold the political beliefs of other people they like and with whom they want to associate. Coherence bias: People are biased towards beliefs that fit well with or reinforce their existing beliefs, regardless of those beliefs' degree of coherence with reality. Part 2. Religion. Many of the claims of religions are not easily verifiable in the day-to-day world. There are many competing religious theories about the origins of life, reincarnation, and paradise, but mistaken beliefs about these rarely impose real world costs upon the believers themselves. Thus, it may be instrumentally rational to be epistemically irrational about these matters. In other words, when forming or updating their religious beliefs, people may tend to relax their intellectual standards for the sake of driving popular support towards their beliefs. [Continue on Wikipedia]

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Buy the book Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Direct from Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Law-Legislation-and-Liberty-A-new-statement-of-the-liberal-principles/Hayek/p/book/9780415522298 Through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415522293/

Buy the book Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Directly from Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Law-Legislation-and-Liberty-A-new-statement-of-the-liberal-principles/Hayek/p/book/9780415522298 Through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415522293/

Buy the book Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Direct from Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Law-Legislation-and-Liberty-A-new-statement-of-the-liberal-principles/Hayek/p/book/9780415522298 Through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415522293/

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a single resource has numerous rightsholders who prevent others from using it, frustrating what would be a socially desirable outcome. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it. The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures including patent thickets, and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations. The term originally appeared in Michael Heller's 1998 article of the same name and is the thesis of his 2008 book. The model was formalized by James M. Buchanan and Yong Yoon. In a 1998 Science article, Heller and Rebecca S. Eisenberg, while not disputing the role of patents in general in motivating invention and disclosure, argue that biomedical research was one of several key areas where competing patent rights could actually prevent useful and affordable products from reaching the marketplace. Examples. In early aviation, the Wright brothers held patents on certain aspects of aircraft, while Glenn Curtiss held patents on ailerons which was an advance on the Wrights' system, but antipathy between the patent holders prevented their use. The government was forced to step in and enforce the existence of a patent pool during World War I. In his 1998 Harvard Law Review article, Michael Heller noted that there were a lot of open air kiosks but also a lot of empty stores in many Eastern European cities after the fall of Communism. Upon investigation, he concluded that it was difficult or even impossible for a startup retailer to negotiate successfully for the use of that space because many different agencies and private parties had rights over the use of store space. Even though all the persons with ownership rights were losing money with the empty stores, and stores were in great demand, competing interests got in the way of the effective use of that space. Heller says that the rise of the "robber barons" in medieval Germany was the result of the tragedy of the anticommons. Nobles commonly attempted to collect tolls on stretches of the Rhine passing by or through their fiefs, building towers alongside the river and stretching iron chains to prevent boats from carrying cargo up and down the river without paying a fee. Repeated attempts were made by the Holy Roman Empire, including several efforts over the centuries led by the Emperor himself, to regulate toll collection on the Rhine, but it was not until the establishment of the "Rhine League" of the Emperor, certain nobles, and certain clergy that the control of the "robber barons" over the Rhine was crushed by military force. River tolls on the Rhine, increasingly imposed by states rather than individual lords, remained a sticking point in relations and commerce in the Rhine basin until the establishment of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine in 1815. Heller and Rebecca Eisenberg are academic law professors who believe that biological patents create a "tragedy of the anticommons", "in which people underuse scarce resources because too many owners can block each other." Others claim that patents have not created this "anticommons" effect on research, based on surveys of scientists.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism Clientelism or client politics is the exchange of goods and services for political support, often involving an implicit or explicit quid-pro-quo. Clientelism involves an asymmetric relationship between groups of political actors described as patrons, brokers, and clients. In client politics an organized minority or interest group benefits at the expense of the public. Client politics may have a strong interaction with the dynamics of identity politics. This is particularly common in a pluralist system, such as in the United States, where minorities can have considerable power shaping public policy. The opposite of client politics is 'entrepreneurial' politics, or conviction politics. Although many definitions for clientelism have been proposed, according to the political scientist Allen Hicken, it is generally thought that there are four key elements of clientelistic relationships: Dyadic relationships: Simply, these are two-way relationships. Contingency: Delivery of a service to a citizen by a politician or broker is contingent on the citizen's actions on behalf of the politician or party through which they are receiving services. Hierarchy: The politician or party is in a higher position of power than the citizen. Iteration: The relationship is not a one-off exchange, but rather, ongoing. Contingency and iteration are the two components shared across most definitions of clientelism. Further reading: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Etiénne de la Boétie - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DMR96XZ Stokes, Susan C.; Dunning, Thad; Nazareno, Marcelo; Brusco, Valeria (September 2013). Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics.