The Why-Policy-Wiki

“Normative as positive” (NAP) — explaining that the [education] policies actually chosen were chosen because they maximize an individualized social welfare function — fails as a useful general positive model of schooling. While NAP can perhaps accommodate the fact of some direct production of schooling by some governments, the reality is that (nearly) all governments produce education and that, by and large, this is their only support to education. Moreover, NAP fails not just in the large but also the small: there are six additional common facts about educational policies inconsistent with NAP. (more; HT Bryan Caplan)

That is Lant Pritchett, and I share his frustration. People usually explain their government’s policies via scenarios wherein such policies would help the world, or at least their local region. But when you point out details at odds with such simple stories, such people are usually uninterested in the subject. They switch to suggesting other scenarios or problems where policy might help, also with little interest in the details.

This evasive style, i.e., the habit of pointing to a diffuse space of possible scenarios and problems instead of particular ones, is a huge obstacle to critics. If you put a lot of time in critiquing one story, people just note that there are lots of other possible stories you didn’t critique.

This style helps people maintain idealist attitudes toward institutions they like. In contrast, people do the opposite for institutions they dislike, such as rival foreign governments or profit-making firms. In those cases, people prefer cynical explanations. For example, people say that firms advertise mainly to fool folks into buying products they don’t need. But the evasion remains; if you critique one cynical explanation they switch to others, avoiding discussing details about any one.

To solve this evasion problem, I propose we create a new kind of wiki that surveys opinions on policy explanations. In this new wiki readers could find items like ” 68% (162/238) of college graduates say the best explanation of government running schools, instead of subsidizing them, is because educated citizens can pay more taxes to benefit other citizens. 54% (7/13) of economics PhDs surveyed say it is to push propaganda.”

Here is how it would work. There would be three category hierarchies: of policies, of policy explanations, and of people with opinions on policy explanations. Each hierarchy would include a few very general categories near the top, and lots of much more specific categories toward the bottom.

Anyone could come to the wiki to contribute opinions on policy explanations. They would first give some demographic info on themselves, and that info would put them somewhere in the category hierarchy of people. They could then browse the category hierarchy of policies, picking a policy to explain. Finally, they could browse the category hierarchy of explanations, picking their favored explanation of that policy.

Users could start by being shown the most common explanation offered so far for similar policies by similar people, and then browsing away from that. Users could also expand the category hierarchies, to add more specific policies and explanations. For particular policy explanation pairs, users might add links to relevant theory, evidence, and arguments. Users might also upvote links added by others. This would help later readers search for well-voted evidence and theory close in the hierarchies to any given policy explanation.

By using category hierarchies, a wide range of people could express a wide range of opinions. Experts could dive into details while those who can barely understand the most basic categories could gesture crudely in their favored directions. Given such a wiki, a critic could focus their efforts on the most popular explanations for a policy by their target audience, and avoid the usual quick evasion to other explanations. Prediction markets tied to this wiki could let people bet that particular explanations won’t hold up well to criticism, or that popular opinion on a topic will drift toward a certain sort of expert opinion.

Of course this wiki could and should also be used to explain common policies of firms, clubs, families, and even individuals. I expect some editorial work to be needed, to organize sensible category hierarchies. But if good editors start the system with good starting hierarchies, the continuing editorial work probably wouldn’t be prohibitive.