Ballot snapshots

It made me really happy a few years ago when a student emailed me a picture of his completed ballot. Rather than tick the box for one of the parties, he'd written in his preference for that Gordon Tullock be elected. I knew that I'd done my job well.

It's maybe illegal to take a picture of your ballot. The Electoral Commission warns against it, but Graeme Edgeler's pretty sure it isn't illegal.

However, electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler said sharing a photo of a completed voting paper was unlikely to be illegal, as the commission's rules were intended to prevent people from mistakenly using a false ballot.

"The Electoral Commission might think it's against the spirit of the law...but the spirit of the law doesn't create a criminal offence.

"They might frown on people doing this, but I can't see a problem: it's part of the democratic process really, you vote how you want and if you want to shout from the rooftops, you can."

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said any complaints about photos of completed voting papers would be assessed on a case by case basis.

The only good reason I can see for banning photos of a ballot is to prevent vote-selling. Suppose I offer you a dollar to vote for my preferred candidate. You can take my dollar, but I have no way of knowing whether you held up your side of the deal. But taking a picture from inside the booth with your ticked ballot provides the proof.

Now this matters less with the postal flag ballot: I could just pay you the dollar for the blank form, fill it in myself, and mail it. But it would still be easier for me to offer a dollar to anybody who tweets a picture of their completed ballot ranking the monkey-butt flag in first place.*

If you think selling votes is a bad thing, then you might want to support the continued ban on taking pictures of the ballot - unless it's a write-in ballot for Gordon Tullock. Those should always be allowed.


 * I do not care enough about flags to actually be making this offer. Are there really people who care enough about flags that they'd be willing to pay for an extra few votes for their preferred option?

Good urban policy makes for good refugee policy

A few months ago, when there was more pressure on government to increase the refugee quota, one of the push-backs from opponents asked where the refugees would live when housing markets are pretty tight.

Bad urban policy that limits supply naturally leads to this kind of view. One more house taken by somebody is one fewer house available for you or your kids when urban policy has made it too hard to build new dwellings to keep up with demand.

And now we have a nice bit of evidence on it by counterexample. Houston gets housing policy right. They allow expansion in the suburbs through use of municipal utility districts in which the subdivisions cover their own infrastructure costs through use of targeted rates that pay off the bonds used to finance things - the policy that Nick Smith reckoned to be some kind of voodoo economics. It just works. 

Turns out that Houston also is able to support a lot of refugees. 

Houston, which admits more refugees than any city in the nation, still supports Syrian refugees, even in light of the hard position carved out by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. "Not allowing refugees makes America look weak,” Houston Mayor Annise Parker told reporters. “It is the only humane thing to do.”

Humane housing policy that maintains housing affordability by allowing both densification and expansion also allows humane refugee policies.

It's also fun to think about the political economy of the mayor/governor divides across America on refugee policy. My first cut at it is that governors' median voters are more rural than mayors', but I doubt that's all of it.

Econ testimonials

In today's mailbag, a note in appreciation of the Econ major from one of Susan's cousins I haven't seen in years but who found me on LinkedIn:

If I recall correctly, the last time we spoke I was a freshman and you were selling me on majoring in economics. You were explaining that employers expect people with econ degrees to be smart and able to see the big picture and that it's flexible meaning an econ major could get into finance or accounting or really any aspect of business; all of which was appealing to me.

As you can probably tell from my profile, I landed in Supply Chain, BUT, I recently learned that was because I was an econ major.

At the time I was hired, there was a belief at XXX & XXX that you needed to be a supply chain major to succeed within supply chain. The manager who hired me didn't believe this and wanted to prove otherwise which is how/why I was able to get a job despite the job market in the US (and probably everywhere) being extremely competitive due to the layoffs and fear surrounding the 2008 financial crisis. I went on to have a pretty good run at XXX & XXX and the experiences there helped me land my current role at XXXXX Chemical.

All in all, the first 7 years of my career have been pretty successful but it all traces back to you convincing me to major in econ that allowed it to work out this way and for that I've been wanting to say thank you. Hope all is well down there.

Glad to have helped! Michael would have done well regardless, but economics likely helped at the margin.

Economics remains the best generalist undergrad degree. Most real on-the-job stuff you have to pick up on-the-job, but economics provides a framework that you can use in a really broad range of careers. The rigour is not only useful in its own right but also signals that you're smarter than the drones majoring in management.* Economists can think.

* I still utterly fail to understand how 'management' exists as an undergraduate degree. I can understand why there's demand for it - students who don't really know better and wanting to do something in business sometime. And I can understand why universities will provide degrees that meet customer demand. But if there are 22 year olds out there who are fit to manage anything, they're likely doing it already without having bothered with a degree. I get management as a post-grad degree on top of a real degree; I get management as a post-experience degree to figure out how to do the people stuff that still baffles me. I don't get it as an undergraduate degree.

Fun with Singer

I'd talked with Peter Singer back in September at the Christchurch WORD festival. Our conversation is now up! I've embedded the audio below, but use the link if it doesn't work. I really enjoyed the event. A few of the highlights:

• Around the 10 minute mark, I noted the push-back from parts of the NZ NGO community against measurement and testing effectiveness and asked whether that were just a NZ thing. Singer talked about the practical difficulties of measuring effectiveness and the importance of getting the donors onside. NZ's problem's been a bit different: good chunks of the government are on-side, and they're a big donor.


• At around the 17 minute mark, I proposed setting up a register of effective charities, and shifting their tax treatment such that donors would get a full dollar tax credit for each dollar so-donated rather than just the $0.33. He liked the idea in principle. I like the implication that we shift to letting people direct their donations rather than having the government do it. Singer liked the implication that we would be doing more to help poor people in poor places rather than focusing on relatively poor people in New Zealand who are, globally, relatively rich. 


• At the 21 minute mark, I followed on more directly: if we could cut funding from New Zealand public health so that the least effective third of what it does were eliminated, with the money going instead to preventing blindness and repairing fistulas in the third world, should we do that? He said he'd push the button to divert those resources. I would too.


• At the 33 minute mark, I asked Singer about the utility of false beliefs. New Zealand's churches seemed able and willing to step up to help New Zealand take on more refugees than anybody else, really. Altruistic atheists just don't seem to be able to get that kind of coordination. Singer said that there is obviously some utility of that sort, but you need to take it up a level and weigh it against the disutility you get on other parts of the bundle. I think that was a bit of a cop-out because it's easy to specify as thought experiment cases where there are net increases in utility. I pressed him a bit: if I enjoy utility from false beliefs, is that ok? He reckoned it ok so long as it didn't have spillover costs. Into the experience machine we go.


• At the 39 minute mark, I had my absolute most fun. As best I can tell, free range lamb raised in New Zealand loves having had the chance to exist. Lambs are joyful. They play and frolic and have a bad day at the end, but I'd sooner get to have that existence than no existence. Then, if those who care about animal ethics all flip to vegetarianism rather than eating free-range Canterbury lamb, they do substantial harm. Demand for ethically raised meat drops, so the supply of it drops, and the balance is tipped toward factory farming. By the 42 minute mark, we got to the nub of it. And Singer saw exactly where I was going to push things and so pre-empted it by just laying it out and agreeing. If we take his position on potential children's utility and the ethics of aborting one that would have a less-good life in favour of a later one who would have a better life, then potential beings' utility counts. And once that happens, the lives of potential joyful lambs matter too. Said Singer: 

  "I think that there is a defensible argument for saying that if the purchase of Canterbury lamb is a necessary condition for lambs to have what is for 99% of their existence a really good life and even the bad days are not like a day of being tortured for 24 hours... I do think that that ... would be a defensible diet."

I had a ridiculous amount of fun. Later, at dinner, I had the lamb. He didn't.

Other people got Singer to sign their copies of his book. I got this instead:

Huge huge thanks to the Christchurch WORD festival for letting me have this much fun.

Quick Triggers

Well, this seemed damning:

9 yr olds accessing alcohol at the Countdown Manukau last night. Supermarket's response is poor. Sort it out Countdown

— Papa Nahi (@papanahi) November 16, 2015

If supermarket clerks were really selling booze to nine year olds, like the kids buying smokes on Clerks, well, that would be worth damning.

It's illegal to sell to under-18s; clerks are supposed to card anyone looking under 25. Susan, far from 25, is occasionally carded and is never sad about it when it happens; never happens to me though.

An employee selling to a 9 year old should be fired on the spot and the store would likely be up for some penalties - would expect they'd be suspended from trading for a while, with the duration depending on the store's history and training practices.

But is it really that plausible that anybody would sell to a 9 year old? Are there really 9 year olds who could pass for 18, or clerks so addled that they'd fail to card? And, more junior staff can't make that call themselves: somebody has to come over and authorise the "yeah, over 18" call. Or that happens most times I buy beer or wine at the supermarket. So something seems fishy.

But let's go on from there. NZ Drug Foundation re-tweeted that initial tweet with comment:

A giant supermarket chain selling booze to children, NINE years below legal age! #shame #appalling https://t.co/LjrqDu0NNI

— NZ Drug Foundation (@nzdrug) November 17, 2015

NZ Drug Foundation seemed pretty quick to find it plausible.

But Dylan Reeve was less credulous:

@nzdrug @LewSOS I can't imagine any supermarket checkout operator actually selling to a 9-year-old.

— Dylan Reeve (@DylanReeve) November 17, 2015

Then @papanahi clarified:

@nzdrug 3 occasions in past fortnight where minors stole alcohol that store aware of. When confronted staff said too overworked to deal with

— Papa Nahi (@papanahi) November 17, 2015

And Lew Stoddart rightly noted that using the term "accessing" when what was really going on was 9 year old kids shoplifting is, well, misleading. It's inviting people to draw the outraged reaction that NZ Drug took:

@DylanReeve @nzdrug In such a case, "accessing" is stretched so far as to be misleading, I think

— Lew (@LewSOS) November 17, 2015

I suppose that @NZDrug will get around to clarifying things for those following it on Twitter in due course.

And who's @papanahi? The handle says "General Manager Maori Public Health at Hapai Te Hauora"

Not entirely sure why a public health official would use the term "accessing" when "shoplifting" is more appropriate, but glad that she clarified things.

Very nice that Dylan had his sceptic's glasses on.

Update: NZ Drug's corrected things. But they've also added this interesting policy suggestion to combat shoplifting by kids:

@DylanReeve @papanahi Open shelves of alcohol not only way - in Canada state owned stores do not display. If we have problems..... 1/2

— NZ Drug Foundation (@nzdrug) November 17, 2015

Behind lock and key where the beautiful packaging can't be seen. Any other products that supermarkets have to sell that way in New Zealand?

I love going shopping for beer and wine. The displays at places like Moore Wilson's, and New World Thorndon... they're things of beauty. Folks like Garage Project and Yeastie Boys put tons of work into their packaging. Tuatara's won awards for their bottles. Hiding that all away, to prevent a few cases of shoplifting a year... well...

Injury costs: mountain biking edition

I really don't like "costs to the public health system" as reason for taxing and banning stuff.

But it's always fun to look at how costs are treated when they come from activities that draw social approbation rather than tut-tutting:

Figures from the Accident Corporation Commission show that mountainbiking injuries across the region have increased from 174 in 2010 to 463 last year with a spike occurring each year. The cost associated with treating those injuries in that same time has jumped from $190,000 to $798,642.

"People do crash a lot, and I think that is an element of the sport in all honesty, but what we try to do is keep it to an absolute minimum," said Nelson Mountain Bike Club chairman Paul Jennings. He said injuries were a part of mountainbiking, as they were in many other sports, including rugby.

...

The ACC figures show that the most common injuries for mountainbikers were soft tissue injuries, lacerations, punctures or stings, fractures or dislocations and dental injuries.

The large majority of injuries were attributed to males between the ages of 35 and 44.

Where are the outraged statements by doctors complaining of the burden of dealing with 463 unnecessary presentations and the alarming near tripling of the number of accidents? The do-gooders noting the heightened risk for mid-life-crisis men irrationally obsessed with proving that they're not really old yet? The worries about kids being brought into this dangerous bike culture via so-called "beginner tracks"? The social cost studies tallying the costs of all the accidents and of the thousands spent irrationally by mountain bike enthusiasts on ever-nicer kit?

More seriously - I love the sensible attitude here. Risk is part of the adventure: mountain bikers know they take on injury risk in exchange for thrills. Would that others' risk preferences were similarly accommodated.

City Status

Robin Hanson wonders whether cities are places for high-status men and the women who seek them, with low-status men relegated to the hinterlands:

I’ve heard that polygamous sects are often run this way today, with older men kicking out young men when they come of age. But re-reading Montaillou on rural 1300 France makes me realize that humanity has long has related harem-like gender patterns.

Back in 1300 France, centrality gave status. The biggest cities were at the top, above towns and then villages. At the bottom were woodcutters and shepards, all male, who spent most of their time wandering far from villages or towns. Along with soldiers and sailors, these men lived dangerous low-status high-mobility lives in sparse areas. They sometimes tempted women into liaisons, or made it rich enough to start a family in a village. Such mating strategies may explain why such men moved so often even they were poor and moving is expensive.

Back in the high status centers, there remained a few high status men and women, many low status women, but fewer low status men. The lower status women were often servants to high status males, and often had affairs with them.

In the US today, the states with the most men relative to women are Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, and Montana — mostly harsher low density areas. In contrast, the states with the most women relative to men are District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, near some of our biggest high status cities. Most big US cities have more women than men. The exceptions are San Jose, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Austin, Seattle, San Diego, places with new booming, mostly tech, industries. Men are more willing to move to try new often-harsher industries and places.

We hear college-educated women complain today that there aren’t enough college-educated men to go around, either during college itself or afterward. Of course there are plenty of other men around, but these women mostly consider such men beneath them. Seems to me this isn’t that different from 1300 France; women are more eager to locate near high status people. They focus on high status men, and lament there aren’t enough to go around.

Is it consistent or inconsistent with the theory that New Zealand has regular farmer balls, in which townie girls head out to the countryside to find rural husbands? The Middlemarch Singles Ball was even given theatrical treatment. Here's the play's premise:

The premise is really good: the hard-up committee discovers to its horror that all the singles coming to the next ball are female: there are no wifeless farmers left. So it is clear that men must be brought in, from the big cities if necessary, and to save Middlemarch's reputation, they must be taught before the ball to behave like real farmers, hard southern men.

Perhaps farmers in New Zealand are high status?