Re: Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part II

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 7:28 PM 7/25/96, janke@unixg.ubc.ca wrote:
>Hello, Tim,
>
>I found your essay interesting, but would like to describe a
>hypothetical situation and my ideas of how your notion of Schelling
>points applies to you to see if I am correctly following your ideas:
>
>Suppose that I live in a rural area and
>I know that my neighbour beats his children because I have seen them with
>bruises before and too many times just to be from household accidents.
>Since I am far enough away from him, the beating does not make enough noise
>to distrub me from any of my activities. I am also planning on
>moving in three years, so there is little danger that I will be a
>victim if the children develop into violent criminals due, in part,
>to their abuse. In this case, the "least action" reasoning seems to
>tell me to do nothing.

I mentioned "beatings" as a specific example of where the community may
decide the costs of intervention are justified. In my view, concentrating
on such "extreme" cases (beatings, Christian Scientist parents, etc.) is
rarely useful, especially when most "interventions" are for so much less
extreme cases.

>On the other hand, the state might do some sort of calculation like
>the following:
>
>(probability the children will become violent criminals) x
>(cost of dealing with violent criminals)
>-(cost of taking the children from the parent)

Well, I don't believe any calculus of "probability the children will become
violent criminals" is useful. We don't know if watching the Power Rangers
will make an 8-year-old "turn into" a criminal at age 18. And so forth.


>Am I following your ideas ok? :)
>

Check out the Friedman URL I gave for more details. The Schelling point
view is more "energy conservation common sense" than utilitarian models
usually have it.

Thus, all of your talk about estimating the chances that someone will
become a criminal in the distant future is not something an "energy
conserver" (a lazy person, basically) will worry about too much.
Especially, but not solely, because there is basically no way to predict
the future.

I might think that my neighbor, a Christian Fundamentalist, is raising
warped kids. But this is his business, so long as I have don't have to pay
for them or their ideas directly. They may turn out to be Dahmerian
cannibals in 10 years, but they probably won't. And, in any case, I won't
lift a finger to change their home environment. (Nor would my neighbor
tolerate it--and he's got a Benelli Super-90 Tactical Shotgun, a lot more
firepower than I have!)

This last paragraph is pretty important. A lot of people realize they can't
personally intervene with their neighbors, and so they seek the power of a
mob or herd to enforce some law they themselves cannot or will not. "There
ought to be a law!" is the most disgusting phrase in the English language.

--Tim May

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