Does anyone have the zoom for todays event. Registered late and not sure I’ll get it.
Timothy_Liptrot
Karma: 382
Added an abstract
In the assassination’s problem, people manipulate the market to win bets. No one is doing that in this case.
Also, knowing when wars will happen is socially beneficial because uncertainty increases the probability of war. If both sides think they are strong, they both take strong bargaining positions. When their offers are rejected they fight. More knowledge → bargains are more likely to be accepted.
Oh god the paragraph breaks didn’t go through. Fixing!
Bottom Of The Envelope Calculation
What’s a BOTEC
Ah, I see. I’m mixing up career capital and status actually.
Multibillion dollar bureaucracies tent to be slow with stuff Ike this. You can call them to learn more, I don’t have all the details.
I have a full time job and can’t provide you a higher level of support/analysis without neglecting my responsibilities.
We also know a lot about what types of regimes are more susceptible to democratization. A democratization effort in Vietnam is much more likely to succeed because Vietnam is a party state, has some elections, has a strongish economy, etc. I can say more about that too.
First off, remove democracy from your lexicon. It’s too complicated and confusing word, it means different things to different people. Usually if you bring democracy into this debate you get a circular answer by accidentally assuming many institutions at once.
A good starting question here is to think about the service recipients. What is the theory of change for how they compel the state to provide services under each system? What assumptions are needed for it to work?
Citizens have to coordinate to punish a leader that does not provide services if they want more services than the leader prefers to provide. So steps are:
Citizens must want services.
Citizens must find out if services are provided and if better provision is possible.
Citizens they must communicate to eachother both the information and their awareness.
Citizens they must coordinate to punish simultaneously because individually attack leaders is ineffective and punishable.
If they want to prevent leaders from counter punishing (repression), citizens must punish repression (see above steps).
Citizens must choose public goods over selling their votes.
Elections make the later steps easier by coordinating simultaneous punishments (election day). Experienced oppositions make 2 and 3 easier. If 1 or 6 are violated, you won’t get any benefit though. Also if the middle class solves this and the poor do not, guess who gets service...
The short answer is that many countries democratize but see little benefit for public service because this is a really long chain that can break down easily.
I may come back and find the studies for this stuff.
Good question. Perhaps I should clarify this in the abstract.
Weakly constrained means elite supporters cannot limite the leader much.
Personalist means weakly constrained by elite supporters. The idea is that one person has lots of power, hence personalist.
Above is my recent article on property rights and sudden deaths of autocrats, which is not really your question. When I find time!
Yes there is a lot of work on this area. AFAIK not on health outcomes but on similar areas. If there’s interest I could do a blog post on it. https://github.com/tliptrot/Academic/raw/d4f44f249235afddbe16c67a3e6849038be22526/One Bullet Propert Rights Liptrot and Srivastava.pdf
True
One solution would be to make grant funding conditional on publishing. That transfers the risk onto me, who knows more about viability.
On follow up: Yeah I have to return to the US to continue my PhD at the end of the Summer. That definitely limits my ability to start a movement.
On game-theory: I am quite optimistic. From what I see, professional political actors like ministers, soldiers and warlords understand the “game” perfectly without my explaining. Regular citizens usually do not understand the games, giving them a disadvantage.
-
I was aware there are some restrictions, but did not think they were so severe. I will reach out to them to learn more. That’s an interesting concern.
-
Yes autocratists study autocracy.
-
| My main question is, how sure are you that you can get articles published in major newspapers?
Good question. I’m uncertain. I would like to write up one piece now and try to get it in, as a check on the viability of the plan.
Thanks for the comment, I’m just talking through things and appreciate the feedback.
In EA speak, I think “career capital” should be your goal. As an early grad, your PhD and skills have low direct value. You should choose either a personally interesting or high status/opportunity position.
I actually disagree with this. Firstly, those are actually pretty good skills. But secondly, I don’t think PhD’s have low direct value. Obviously most people’s PhD’s have 0 direct value, but that’s because people don’t select their areas strategically at all.
There’s a two-way matching problem here. I would like to exchange a detailed study done well on an issue for a career. And lots of institutions would like to hire someone who has studied their issues for the information and for the signalling value (only a good hire could understand the issue so well). I’ve already done this with my first paper that got me the consulting gig.
The thing is, few industries are going out looking for PhD students. The WB does, but the CIA, State Department, political risk consultants, none of them are doing that. So you need to input the effort to solve the two-way matching problem by finding them and credibly signaling your value. That’s not something most PhD students do at all. But I live in DC, and I’m good at networking so I can do that.
Additionally, everyone is seeking “career capital”. The hunt for “career capital” is super crowded and exhausting. Trying to actually do things is easier.
I think the “for just 11 generations” thing is obviously a joke. Obviously they can’t influence the culture of their kids by that much.
Same thing with the old Epstein “impregnate 20 women in a day” thing. It’s obviously impossible.