Ah, got it, thanks. My follow-up post describes one important reason to think this isnât âweirdâ, namely, decentralized spending is truly decided/âinfluenced 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 publicâs values *as expressed by allocating a fixed sum of vouchers* could diverge importantly from the values they express when voting. (How many ppl wouldâve funded the war in Iraq over their kidsâ schools, had the tradeoff been made so explicit?) And public choice theory gives us reasons to expect government âvaluesâ to differ from votersâ.
I agree the âcompetenceâ objection is the big one. Of course, voters arenât directly *implementing* projects here, so the question is whether they can identify other agencies/âorganizations 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 pplâs choices. Obviously it would be preferable for expert endorsements/âadvice to get more public attention, if possible...)
Ah, got it, thanks. My follow-up post describes one important reason to think this isnât âweirdâ, namely, decentralized spending is truly decided/âinfluenced 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 publicâs values *as expressed by allocating a fixed sum of vouchers* could diverge importantly from the values they express when voting. (How many ppl wouldâve funded the war in Iraq over their kidsâ schools, had the tradeoff been made so explicit?) And public choice theory gives us reasons to expect government âvaluesâ to differ from votersâ.
I agree the âcompetenceâ objection is the big one. Of course, voters arenât directly *implementing* projects here, so the question is whether they can identify other agencies/âorganizations 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 pplâs choices. Obviously it would be preferable for expert endorsements/âadvice to get more public attention, if possible...)