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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I think there is severe underestimation of the massive difficulties of gaming the system with direct handouts. Moreover, I suspect it's more often our outraged sense of unfairness (why should they get a handout) than the desire not to diss that causes a problem.

In particular the problem is that either handouts are insufficent to offset the imposed costs for many people and as a result there a pile of horrific stories in the media about people who were screwed over by this government program or the handouts must delibrately over estimate the cost they impose to avoid failing to cover the costs and causing significant harm.

However, when we give handouts that are highly utility positive to groups who we don't feel need them it tends to invoke our sense of outrage.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

"we will throw away trillions in gains to avoid dissing them via direct handouts?"

Are you sure it's the recipients of the handouts whose feelings we're favouring? In my experience the people who complain most about handouts are the ones who aren't receiving them.

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