Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Peter Gerdes's avatar

I think a number of your law examples miss relevant considerations.

For instance, re: corporal punishment and volume discount on crimes there is the consideration of protecting the community by keeping people locked up and the fact that criminals are often behaving irrationality about future consequences.

If you want to both minimize the utility loss as a result of keeping someone imprisoned but know that extra time on a sentence beyond 5-10 years doesn't do much to decrease deterrence then volume discount on crimes is a plausible solution. Especially if criminals aren't behaving fully rationally.

Regarding some of your other examples (and I think the corporal punishment one to an extent), while I agree many of these are stupid, they are a result of the voter wanting to feel good about themselves. Yes, I think ppl should be able to sell sex, some organs etc, but voters don't want to believe they live in a society where that's really a rational choice or wish to enforce their moral views so it's hard to see a fix within a democratic system.

Expand full comment
Berder's avatar

"the simple method of a weighted average over individual utility functions does a fine job of combining individual preferences into a consistent group preference."

Sure - the problem is, everyone's true utility function is unknown to anyone but them, and there's no way to extract it for voting purposes. You can't poll for it; people would be incentivized to exaggerate their degree of preference so that their vote would count more.

"Law is full of loopholes, where you can avoid the intent of particular laws via clever combinations of behaviors. As in asset protection, tax shelters, litigation-proofing, contrived defenses, and political asylum."

Those loopholes are there because the rich and powerful want them to be there, because they are the ones with the power to exploit them. Meanwhile police will destroy the tents and temporary structures of homeless people. The legal system works for the powerful, who designed it that way.

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts