[my tone here is ranting because I’m mad at the Israeli public, but at the same time I’m aware that I’m no expert and you might correct me everywhere]
I truly and deeply feel you on that—this is all extremely frustrating and I’ve had to live with more than my fair share of terrible politics and politicians.
Ah, if regulators were trying to get some tradeoff (for something like “safety” and not something like “get elected” / “corruption” / something like that), then I would change my mind very significantly.
Yeah, both corruption and tradeoffs for goals of election/reelection [1]definitely do come into this—I was focused on the ignorance aspect and didn’t touch on the malfeasance aspect, but it is definitely very real.
My point is that I think there are many cases where the government is not balancing some interest like “safety”, it is simply something between “wrong” and “corrupt”, and the way the gov pulls this off is partly because the public doesn’t consider things like “there is a cost to protecting a specific Israeli pamper maker, and these costs add up, and it is negative sum”. Maybe I’d accept it if the only people who’d vote for protecting the Israeli pamper maker were stakeholders in the pamper company, but that’s not the situation, they get widespread support, “Israelies wanting to help each other” or something (but in a way that is negative sum way by mistake).
I certainly see your point, but I want to point out that the “negative net” here isn’t necessarily as self-evident as you seem to think it is. Politics are messy and economic policy isn’t only about pure economics—the costs of “Israelis wanting to help each other” could very well be acceptable and even necessary to someone who prioritizes nationalist sentiments.
I don’t want to comment on your examples in specific, because I don’t really know the relevant policy and political context in detail, although I will say that I’m not sure I find them convincing as examples of “the government is acting corruptly/just wrong, and people don’t get it because they lack economic literacy”. In particular, 1,3 and 4 seem like they are actually very much related to not only corruption but specifically regulatory capture or just straight up institutional breakdown. The egg industry being heavily regulated but extremely unsafe is a sign that the regulatory institution isn’t doing it’s job, for some reason or other—corruption, collusion, capture, being underfunded or underpowered (and these can certainly coexist with a strong regulatory framework). I completely agree that the war argument in number 2 is bonkers, but it points to more of a lack of critical thinking in general than a lack of economic literacy—basic economic literacy won’t tell you that your oil is being imported and farming needs fuel and ergo even if you have strong local agriculture industries, they can’t be independent in war times. But I am also fairly confident in assuming that this claim isn’t the entire backbone of protecting local economies and industries—“protecting the local economy ” tends to be tied up in a lot of political and affective ideas about right and wrong and national identity, and just the everyday anxieties around financial health, employment and sustaining one’s life in a capitalist society.
I’m not at all trying to argue that politicians are always good and wise, and that all regulation is good, and that people are generally smart enough to not have to learn things—quite the contrary, I think that a lot of these systems are fundamentally broken and I’ve never once in my life voted for someone I actually trust, let alone truly like. What I’m saying is that these are all very complex things—even the examples you seem to write off as just bad or clearly wrong. People have a lot of competing interests and priorities when it comes to voting, and something that doesn’t make sense from an econ theory homo economicus POV can be accepted and supported broadly simply because people don’t really function that way—they might care more about nationalism or supporting compatriots (I personally know a lot of people who would rather pay more for lower qualities products just because it’s “home grown” and they have very strong national identification). I also don’t think that the enitre reason people can’t flag these examples of corruption as corruption isn’t that they lack economic literacy. Things like disinterest, lack of knowledge about these policies, high trust in the government and institutions etc. all play a role in this. I don’t think that economic literacy alone is a huge enough factor in a lot of political choices and attitudes, and I don’t think that a simplified economic literacy will be helpful in rectifying these problems. I personally don’t really think that there’s much meaningful difference between the kind of “knowledge” you get about policies from your intuition and experience and from just following political debates in media and an economic literacy that is simplified to “Raising prices causes people to buy less. Reducing prices causes people to buy more./Limiting supply means there will be less to buy (even if prices are low)/Limiting prices (too much) causes less production, and so there’s less supply”, for example, in being able to understand policies. For economic literacy to be meaningful in understanding policies and politics, it needs to be much more in depth and complex, and give a good idea of the economic and non-economic context of the issue.
I have a migraine coming on and I think I’m rambling because of it, sorry about that. To put it in a tidy summary, I’d say that the reason I don’t think the type of economic literacy teaching you seem to be advocating for is helpful is because it’s simply too simplistic—it doesn’t really give people the knowledge or reasoning skills they need to navigate these very complex issues, and it tends to boil down very disparate problems down into some kind of amorphous blob like “regulation bad, free market good” or “regulation good, free market bad” to make it legible and shareable. I don’t really think this will accomplish the admirable goal you have of either meaningfully raising economic literacy or leveraging that economic literacy for better policy and political outcomes simply because it’s insufficient for that task.
I do want to say that making trade offs for reelection is, I think, a lot more complicated than something like corruption—there are a few ways to look at this. One is that it’s a self-serving act in the pursuit of power, and it thus a Bad Thing. Another is a more populist approach—if you do thing to get elected and thing gets you elected, that could be considered a manifestation or reflection that thing is actually want the people wants, and even if it isn’t in their best interest from your vantage point, democracy is the right of the people to make choices for themselves, even if they have to pay a price for it. Most importantly, in my opinion, you can also think of it as a calculated tradeoff with good intentions—if you think thing A is more important to do than thing B, but you need to get reelected or even just elected to do thing A and sacrificing what you think is the morally correct thing to on thing B is necessary for that, that can be considered an unfortunate but necessary trade off, and it’s one that we see happen a lot in real life. Politicians don’t run or get elected on a single policy choice, and a lot of the work of policy making involves making concessions and compromises to attain some kind of “greater good”, even if an isolated policy choice made in that pursuit is undesirable or harmful. I don’t want to say that this is always good or acceptable or reasonable—it most certainly isn’t. But I do think that there is a lot more room for nuance when it comes to trade offs for election than there is for tradeoffs for corruption.
I truly and deeply feel you on that—this is all extremely frustrating and I’ve had to live with more than my fair share of terrible politics and politicians.
Yeah, both corruption and tradeoffs for goals of election/reelection [1]definitely do come into this—I was focused on the ignorance aspect and didn’t touch on the malfeasance aspect, but it is definitely very real.
I certainly see your point, but I want to point out that the “negative net” here isn’t necessarily as self-evident as you seem to think it is. Politics are messy and economic policy isn’t only about pure economics—the costs of “Israelis wanting to help each other” could very well be acceptable and even necessary to someone who prioritizes nationalist sentiments.
I don’t want to comment on your examples in specific, because I don’t really know the relevant policy and political context in detail, although I will say that I’m not sure I find them convincing as examples of “the government is acting corruptly/just wrong, and people don’t get it because they lack economic literacy”. In particular, 1,3 and 4 seem like they are actually very much related to not only corruption but specifically regulatory capture or just straight up institutional breakdown. The egg industry being heavily regulated but extremely unsafe is a sign that the regulatory institution isn’t doing it’s job, for some reason or other—corruption, collusion, capture, being underfunded or underpowered (and these can certainly coexist with a strong regulatory framework). I completely agree that the war argument in number 2 is bonkers, but it points to more of a lack of critical thinking in general than a lack of economic literacy—basic economic literacy won’t tell you that your oil is being imported and farming needs fuel and ergo even if you have strong local agriculture industries, they can’t be independent in war times. But I am also fairly confident in assuming that this claim isn’t the entire backbone of protecting local economies and industries—“protecting the local economy ” tends to be tied up in a lot of political and affective ideas about right and wrong and national identity, and just the everyday anxieties around financial health, employment and sustaining one’s life in a capitalist society.
I’m not at all trying to argue that politicians are always good and wise, and that all regulation is good, and that people are generally smart enough to not have to learn things—quite the contrary, I think that a lot of these systems are fundamentally broken and I’ve never once in my life voted for someone I actually trust, let alone truly like. What I’m saying is that these are all very complex things—even the examples you seem to write off as just bad or clearly wrong. People have a lot of competing interests and priorities when it comes to voting, and something that doesn’t make sense from an econ theory homo economicus POV can be accepted and supported broadly simply because people don’t really function that way—they might care more about nationalism or supporting compatriots (I personally know a lot of people who would rather pay more for lower qualities products just because it’s “home grown” and they have very strong national identification). I also don’t think that the enitre reason people can’t flag these examples of corruption as corruption isn’t that they lack economic literacy. Things like disinterest, lack of knowledge about these policies, high trust in the government and institutions etc. all play a role in this. I don’t think that economic literacy alone is a huge enough factor in a lot of political choices and attitudes, and I don’t think that a simplified economic literacy will be helpful in rectifying these problems. I personally don’t really think that there’s much meaningful difference between the kind of “knowledge” you get about policies from your intuition and experience and from just following political debates in media and an economic literacy that is simplified to “Raising prices causes people to buy less. Reducing prices causes people to buy more./Limiting supply means there will be less to buy (even if prices are low)/Limiting prices (too much) causes less production, and so there’s less supply”, for example, in being able to understand policies. For economic literacy to be meaningful in understanding policies and politics, it needs to be much more in depth and complex, and give a good idea of the economic and non-economic context of the issue.
I have a migraine coming on and I think I’m rambling because of it, sorry about that. To put it in a tidy summary, I’d say that the reason I don’t think the type of economic literacy teaching you seem to be advocating for is helpful is because it’s simply too simplistic—it doesn’t really give people the knowledge or reasoning skills they need to navigate these very complex issues, and it tends to boil down very disparate problems down into some kind of amorphous blob like “regulation bad, free market good” or “regulation good, free market bad” to make it legible and shareable. I don’t really think this will accomplish the admirable goal you have of either meaningfully raising economic literacy or leveraging that economic literacy for better policy and political outcomes simply because it’s insufficient for that task.
I do want to say that making trade offs for reelection is, I think, a lot more complicated than something like corruption—there are a few ways to look at this. One is that it’s a self-serving act in the pursuit of power, and it thus a Bad Thing. Another is a more populist approach—if you do thing to get elected and thing gets you elected, that could be considered a manifestation or reflection that thing is actually want the people wants, and even if it isn’t in their best interest from your vantage point, democracy is the right of the people to make choices for themselves, even if they have to pay a price for it. Most importantly, in my opinion, you can also think of it as a calculated tradeoff with good intentions—if you think thing A is more important to do than thing B, but you need to get reelected or even just elected to do thing A and sacrificing what you think is the morally correct thing to on thing B is necessary for that, that can be considered an unfortunate but necessary trade off, and it’s one that we see happen a lot in real life. Politicians don’t run or get elected on a single policy choice, and a lot of the work of policy making involves making concessions and compromises to attain some kind of “greater good”, even if an isolated policy choice made in that pursuit is undesirable or harmful. I don’t want to say that this is always good or acceptable or reasonable—it most certainly isn’t. But I do think that there is a lot more room for nuance when it comes to trade offs for election than there is for tradeoffs for corruption.