Ah, got it, thanks. My follow-up post describes one important reason to think this isn’t “weird”, namely, decentralized spending is truly decided/influenced by everyone, whereas government spending is effectively just decided by the winning party, who may not have any interest in representing the entire public.
I think there is some reason to expect that the public’s values *as expressed by allocating a fixed sum of vouchers* could diverge importantly from the values they express when voting. (How many ppl would’ve funded the war in Iraq over their kids’ schools, had the tradeoff been made so explicit?) And public choice theory gives us reasons to expect government “values” to differ from voters’.
I agree the “competence” objection is the big one. Of course, voters aren’t directly *implementing* projects here, so the question is whether they can identify other agencies/organizations that are more competent (on average) than government. A lot would depend upon what sort of media infrastructure developed alongside the policy. (One can imagine celebrity or church endorsements etc. having a lot of influence on ppl’s choices. Obviously it would be preferable for expert endorsements/advice to get more public attention, if possible...)
Ah, got it, thanks. My follow-up post describes one important reason to think this isn’t “weird”, namely, decentralized spending is truly decided/influenced by everyone, whereas government spending is effectively just decided by the winning party, who may not have any interest in representing the entire public.
I think there is some reason to expect that the public’s values *as expressed by allocating a fixed sum of vouchers* could diverge importantly from the values they express when voting. (How many ppl would’ve funded the war in Iraq over their kids’ schools, had the tradeoff been made so explicit?) And public choice theory gives us reasons to expect government “values” to differ from voters’.
I agree the “competence” objection is the big one. Of course, voters aren’t directly *implementing* projects here, so the question is whether they can identify other agencies/organizations that are more competent (on average) than government. A lot would depend upon what sort of media infrastructure developed alongside the policy. (One can imagine celebrity or church endorsements etc. having a lot of influence on ppl’s choices. Obviously it would be preferable for expert endorsements/advice to get more public attention, if possible...)