Tom Slee's book initially stood out to this reviewer as "Naomi Klein via game theory". At its core it wishes to highlight life, wealth and, well, quality inequality as a social ill, and then diagnose the disease as caused by too much choice. The first chapter bears more than a slight resemblance to anti-free-market texts, even coining its own moniker "MarketThink". But, abruptly, there is a switch--the reader is informed that dispassionate game theory will uncover the cause of inefficient effect. She is also assured that Slee does not think choice is good or bad, just that it often doesn't give us what we want.
It is an interesting and novel take, and "prisoner's dilemma" enthusiasts (such as this reviewer) will enjoy another application of game theory to social evolution. (She notes a proviso, echoed from David Friedman: "to be employed only when all easier alternatives fail").
So why doesn't choice work all the time (and why should it not be the mainstream policy prescription applied to the resolution of every bargaining process)? Well because of the defection problem in the PD game, which becomes the free-rider / public goods / collective action problem in wider fields. If my best choice, no matter what you do, is the opposite of what I would like yours to be, and this is symmetric between us, then we have an issue. Jack shops at Wal-Mart because it is cheaper, but he would like the city-centre shops and linked public spaces to remain frequented by others. But so do, and so would they. Thus downtown perishes and only Wal-Mart remains--not what anyone preferred but what they all chose, freely.
There are many more examples of essentially the same thing. Slee usefully translates choice into "best reply": the characterization appropriate to multi-player arrangements that most of society is. He also acknowledges that (positive and negative) externalities are everywhere, not just in public rivers that factories pollute. Too many to do much about. And he touches on path dependence--how local Nash equilibria become reached by random chance as well as pathologically, and rational trend-following behaviour / winner-takes-all / network effects are in-built to many high-bounty societal processes. A common thread is to highlight many arenas where maximising choice impairs utility, or maybe: minimises preference of outcome. In many examples rational choice will also concentrate winnings into the hands of those who have already won (or know someone who has), resulting in extreme inequalities.
The generally unspoken, but lurking, remedy throughout the book is for government-enabled collective action of one form or another. If this appears understated, it is presumably (as the author laments) because of the ability of calls for regulation to ignite immediate opposition from free-marketers. Your reviewer appreciates such caution, but she finds it easy to agree with many of those calls (if not all). Legal minimum standards that reduce adverse selection in many goods and services markets are cheaper than costly (wasteful) signalling devices (which include arms races) and they also often work better. Rigging the incentive structures of various public goods arenas to "enforce co-operation" (a cute oxymoron, but strangely correct) can result in more of what everyone wants. Universal health insurance--a reduction in choice if ever there was one--is something every OECD country bar the US decided that it preferred. And since this book was written, now so does the US. Almost.
Many of the choice dilemmas appear to be of the not having one's cake and eating it variety though, even if they arise via prisoner's dilemmas. Some of the others seem paradoxical--in the realm of temptation Slee regrets that we lack a viable choice to place ourselves beyond it. Well, that means not enough choice, not too much, right? And more than a few of the bad scenarios suggested seem to evoke the "Shoe Event Horizon" (a humourously fictitious exaggeration of tipping points and trend following appearing in Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide" novels)
But overall your reviewer was inclined to agreement with its opening premise, and she regards this book as fundamentally politically impartial (which is an undersupplied public good in her view). Hence the recommendations and conclusions--such as they are--are mostly equivocal and rightly so. This is touched on towards the end of the book where, in reference to the Campaign for Real Ale, a movement started in the UK by a Trotskyist, "It is not always clear whether [it] is simply a healthy part of the market economy or a protest against what the market economy is providing". How about both?
It is an interesting and novel take, and "prisoner's dilemma" enthusiasts (such as this reviewer) will enjoy another application of game theory to social evolution. (She notes a proviso, echoed from David Friedman: "to be employed only when all easier alternatives fail").
So why doesn't choice work all the time (and why should it not be the mainstream policy prescription applied to the resolution of every bargaining process)? Well because of the defection problem in the PD game, which becomes the free-rider / public goods / collective action problem in wider fields. If my best choice, no matter what you do, is the opposite of what I would like yours to be, and this is symmetric between us, then we have an issue. Jack shops at Wal-Mart because it is cheaper, but he would like the city-centre shops and linked public spaces to remain frequented by others. But so do, and so would they. Thus downtown perishes and only Wal-Mart remains--not what anyone preferred but what they all chose, freely.
There are many more examples of essentially the same thing. Slee usefully translates choice into "best reply": the characterization appropriate to multi-player arrangements that most of society is. He also acknowledges that (positive and negative) externalities are everywhere, not just in public rivers that factories pollute. Too many to do much about. And he touches on path dependence--how local Nash equilibria become reached by random chance as well as pathologically, and rational trend-following behaviour / winner-takes-all / network effects are in-built to many high-bounty societal processes. A common thread is to highlight many arenas where maximising choice impairs utility, or maybe: minimises preference of outcome. In many examples rational choice will also concentrate winnings into the hands of those who have already won (or know someone who has), resulting in extreme inequalities.
The generally unspoken, but lurking, remedy throughout the book is for government-enabled collective action of one form or another. If this appears understated, it is presumably (as the author laments) because of the ability of calls for regulation to ignite immediate opposition from free-marketers. Your reviewer appreciates such caution, but she finds it easy to agree with many of those calls (if not all). Legal minimum standards that reduce adverse selection in many goods and services markets are cheaper than costly (wasteful) signalling devices (which include arms races) and they also often work better. Rigging the incentive structures of various public goods arenas to "enforce co-operation" (a cute oxymoron, but strangely correct) can result in more of what everyone wants. Universal health insurance--a reduction in choice if ever there was one--is something every OECD country bar the US decided that it preferred. And since this book was written, now so does the US. Almost.
Many of the choice dilemmas appear to be of the not having one's cake and eating it variety though, even if they arise via prisoner's dilemmas. Some of the others seem paradoxical--in the realm of temptation Slee regrets that we lack a viable choice to place ourselves beyond it. Well, that means not enough choice, not too much, right? And more than a few of the bad scenarios suggested seem to evoke the "Shoe Event Horizon" (a humourously fictitious exaggeration of tipping points and trend following appearing in Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide" novels)
But overall your reviewer was inclined to agreement with its opening premise, and she regards this book as fundamentally politically impartial (which is an undersupplied public good in her view). Hence the recommendations and conclusions--such as they are--are mostly equivocal and rightly so. This is touched on towards the end of the book where, in reference to the Campaign for Real Ale, a movement started in the UK by a Trotskyist, "It is not always clear whether [it] is simply a healthy part of the market economy or a protest against what the market economy is providing". How about both?
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