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Market design can feed the poor

worksinprogress.co

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Re: Market design can feed the poor

#11

Post by kiba »

Taek wrote: post #7
jimnotgym wrote: post #4

What absolute rubbish this article is from top to bottom. A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda. Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin

I have close acquaintances who will take that $50, spend it on drugs, and then starve to death. If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money. If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5…

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be 100% effective, just need to be effective enough that it reduces the size of the problem to a manageable size.

Then you can manage the special cases with specialists.

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#12

Post by rolandog »

kiba wrote: post #11
Taek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have close acquaintances who will take that $50, spend it on drugs, and then starve to death. If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money. If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5…

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be 100% effective, just need to be effective enough that it reduces the size of the problem to a manageable size. Then you can manage the special cases with specialists.

Exactly. Continuous improvement where all relevantly stakeholders are taken into account should be the norm.

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#13

Post by [deleted] »

jimnotgym wrote: post #4

What absolute rubbish this article is from top to bottom. A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda. Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin

[deleted]

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#14

Post by megaman821 »

dgllghr wrote: post #3

It’s a good thing they had central planning to come up with this system and well defined regulations to ensure it worked appropriately.

Are you trying to suggest that this is an example of a planned economy? Maybe you should look at definitions of planned vs market economies. You still have design and regulation in a market economy.

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#15

Post by bsingerzero »

Overall I thought the article was interesting!

I did find it funny that multiple times it cited the medical resident match making algorithm as a success. Anyone who has gone through this process knows how horrible of a system it is. You essentially open an envelop that tells your job and location for the next 3-6 years. Hospitals + government love the system because they can artificially reduce resident wages, applicants cannot negotiate job offers.

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#16

Post by MisterTea »

Taek wrote: post #7
jimnotgym wrote: post #4

What absolute rubbish this article is from top to bottom. A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda. Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin

I have close acquaintances who will take that $50, spend it on drugs, and then starve to death. If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money. If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5…

> If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money.

Which can be traded for money.

Believe me, I understand first hand how difficult a heavily addicted person can be. Recovery is a huge process that takes more than just giving someone a safe place to live and food.

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#17

Post by sparselogic »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #6

The article really wants to drive home how bad "central planning" is, but the problem, as per the article, originates from the fact that the food banks themselves are operating semi-independently from Feeding America. So actually the whole problem originates because you already have decentralization, which is the opposite of central planning. And this is a common situation with a lot of public services when they do a…

Funny to see “rationing” used to describe bidding, instead of the clear rationing approach used first: each food bank got an allocation of all foods based on population served.

Just because the new approach accomplished the goals of the old one better, that doesn’t mean it took the old approach’s name. ;)

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#18

Post by sparselogic »

btreecat wrote: post #5

>The system operated in ignorance of what food banks needed. Clearly the root of the problem. Straw Manning "central planning" is a perverted way to characterize the failure.

Straw manning? One of the earliest critiques of central planning was its inability to learn and respond to unforeseen complexity in the real world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

Re: Market design can feed the poor

#20

Post by _rpxpx »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #6

The article really wants to drive home how bad "central planning" is, but the problem, as per the article, originates from the fact that the food banks themselves are operating semi-independently from Feeding America. So actually the whole problem originates because you already have decentralization, which is the opposite of central planning. And this is a common situation with a lot of public services when they do a…

Brilliantly put. Also, the very fact that there are millions of underfed people in the richest country in the world, is itself evidence of the economic failure of markets. As Richard Wolff put it: in a milk shortage, markets allocate milk to the people with the most money - i.e. the least need for milk. That's not efficient.
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