Seeing your reply to FAWS (for which you forgot to credit Megan McArdle), I think you’re rushing too quickly to analogize a correct insight from one problem to a different one. It may be that unlike in the other case, the number of people on the relevant margin is far smaller here, possibly negligibly small, and this does sound plausible to me given the nature of the problem. You are of course welcome to disagree, but note that I merely said that I find this plausible, whereas you’re coming out with very confident assertions without evidence.
Moreover, with the example you cited (subsidizing illegitimacy through welfare), there is the additional problem that one of the main costs of the behavior in question used to be the strong social stigma attached to it. For this reason, subsidizing it caused a runaway feedback process in which the increased incidence of illegitimacy due to the subsidy increasingly eroded the stigma, thus further lowering the cost, until the situation settled in a wholly different equilibrium. I don’t think any such runaway feedback could occur in the wethouse case.
I can imagine wet-houses being overrun by frat boys who just want to drink all the time. This seems like a possible avenue for a runaway feedback loop.
Seeing your reply to FAWS (for which you forgot to credit Megan McArdle), I think you’re rushing too quickly to analogize a correct insight from one problem to a different one. It may be that unlike in the other case, the number of people on the relevant margin is far smaller here, possibly negligibly small, and this does sound plausible to me given the nature of the problem. You are of course welcome to disagree, but note that I merely said that I find this plausible, whereas you’re coming out with very confident assertions without evidence.
Moreover, with the example you cited (subsidizing illegitimacy through welfare), there is the additional problem that one of the main costs of the behavior in question used to be the strong social stigma attached to it. For this reason, subsidizing it caused a runaway feedback process in which the increased incidence of illegitimacy due to the subsidy increasingly eroded the stigma, thus further lowering the cost, until the situation settled in a wholly different equilibrium. I don’t think any such runaway feedback could occur in the wethouse case.
I can imagine wet-houses being overrun by frat boys who just want to drink all the time. This seems like a possible avenue for a runaway feedback loop.
Thanks, I edited to add.