Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Russil Wvong
Really enjoyed this. Thanks, Russil.
Hard for projects to get strong community support and approval when the people that will benefit from a new project don't live in the community and are essentially voiceless at these community consultations. What would make their voices heard, as you point out, is if is city-wide planning and policies we set, not project-by-project approval because we know project-by-project approval results in lopsided representation. So many issues are collective action problems, and good institutions use tried and true decision rules to counteract the incentives that end up hurting the most people.
Also, nice to see you link to an older Joseph Heath article. We need more public intellectuals like him. Speaking of, he may touch on housing in one of his newer books, the Machinery of Government.
Thanks Mark! I'm a big fan of Joseph Heath - I thought "The Machinery of Government" was awesome, if written for a somewhat less general audience than "Filthy Lucre" or "The Efficient Society." If you haven't seen it already, I'd also recommend "Cooperation and Social Justice."
I've learned a lot about collective action problems and the difficulty of cooperation from reading Heath. A specific article by Heath explaining "methodological individualism," the principle that when analyzing or explaining social phenomena, you need to look at individual incentives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/methodological-individualism/
Really enjoyed this. Thanks, Russil.
Hard for projects to get strong community support and approval when the people that will benefit from a new project don't live in the community and are essentially voiceless at these community consultations. What would make their voices heard, as you point out, is if is city-wide planning and policies we set, not project-by-project approval because we know project-by-project approval results in lopsided representation. So many issues are collective action problems, and good institutions use tried and true decision rules to counteract the incentives that end up hurting the most people.
Also, nice to see you link to an older Joseph Heath article. We need more public intellectuals like him. Speaking of, he may touch on housing in one of his newer books, the Machinery of Government.
Thanks Mark! I'm a big fan of Joseph Heath - I thought "The Machinery of Government" was awesome, if written for a somewhat less general audience than "Filthy Lucre" or "The Efficient Society." If you haven't seen it already, I'd also recommend "Cooperation and Social Justice."
I've learned a lot about collective action problems and the difficulty of cooperation from reading Heath. A specific article by Heath explaining "methodological individualism," the principle that when analyzing or explaining social phenomena, you need to look at individual incentives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/methodological-individualism/
Excellent! Thank you, Russil. Nice to know you read so broadly to understand these issues.