15 November 2007 at 12:34 am Peter Klein 4 comments
| Peter Klein |
Twenty percent of NYU students would trade their right to vote in the next Presidential election for an iPod. Two-thirds would do it for free tuition. And half would give up their right to vote forever for $1 million. Where do we rational non-voters sign up? (Via Drudge.)
Entry filed under: - Foss -. Tags: .
Peter G. Klein and Micheal E. Sykuta, eds., The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics (Edward Elgar, 2010).
Peter G. Klein, The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets (Mises Institute, 2010).
Richard N. Langlois, The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (Routledge, 2007).
Nicolai J. Foss, Strategy, Economic Organization, and the Knowledge Economy: The Coordination of Firms and Resources (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Raghu Garud, Arun Kumaraswamy, and Richard N. Langlois, eds., Managing in the Modular Age: Architectures, Networks and Organizations (Blackwell, 2003).
Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein, eds., Entrepreneurship and the Firm: Austrian Perspectives on Economic Organization (Elgar, 2002).
1.
Tom S. | 15 November 2007 at 1:03 am
An upcoming paper arguing voting is rational: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rational_final6.pdf
2. the right to vote and overreaction « B Misc. | 15 November 2007 at 5:58 pm
[...] me wrong, the right to vote is an important one. But it’s silly to question the completely rational decision to not exercise it once in exchange for material pleasure. After all, the same people [...]
3.
Cliff Grammich | 16 November 2007 at 9:41 pm
Peter, have I ever quoted Harold Gosnell’s Machine Politics: Chicago Model on this subject to you? Gosnell’s a keen observer of urban politics, and the book, which I highly recommend to those interested in the topic, was pioneering in its approach and method. Still, some passages will strike a more jaded (or realistic?) reader as silly, such as this on the purchase of votes in the mid-1930s (p. 89):
“In some parts of Chicago where poverty and insecurity have robbed men of hope, an election bribe of anywhere form $0.50 to $5.00 or $10.00 looks large and the vote itself, when lost in a sea of 1,700,000 other votes in the city looks small. Of course, in the long run the bribe-receiver gets the small end of the bargain. He pays in inefficient city administration at points that affect him most . . .”
$10 in the mid-1930s–which the BLS inflation calculator tells me would now be more than $150–for my vote for an aldercritter? Good grief. And, as a colleague once pointed out to me, given the occasionally troubled history of police-community relations in Chicago, maybe voters in the “parts of Chicago where poverty and insecurity have robbed men of hope” would actually appreciate more inefficiencies in some city services . . .
4.
Peter Klein | 16 November 2007 at 10:15 pm
A hundred and fifty bucks? I’d do it even if didn’t get me fewer government services! :-)