Surprised by the upvotes. This is a textbook example of ignoring the second-order effects and congratulating yourself for being smarter that the others.
Basically, game theory. Having an option taken away (by the past-you) is the winning strategy in the game of Chicken. Making paying for blackmail illegal reduces the incentive of other people to blackmail you. Yes, in certain situations having fewer options is better for you!
If you disagree with a specific case, you need to argue about that specific case. But there is no general rule about why having more options is always obviously better.
EDIT:
(Reformatted the text, maybe the previous version was confusing.)
The game theory example ignores the principal-agent effect. We are not talking about you rationally choosing to give up some of your options. We are talking about someone else, who is not well-aligned with you, taking away your options, generally without input from you.
I have a problem with the generalization. I believe that taking away your options is sometimes good and sometimes bad. You seem to say that it is always bad. (Did I misunderstand that part?)
From that perspective, even someone not well-aligned can make a lucky guess once in a while. Also, it’s not like people make these decisions for others completely randomly. We have the meme “it is bad to use sex as a payment” because many people in the past were in the position where they had to use sex as a payment and they disliked it.
I think I overstated slightly. And I’m focusing on the rationale for taking away options as much as the taking away itself. I’d restate to something like: taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
There’s a discussion further down the thread about arms race dynamics, where you take away options in order to solve a coordination problem, where I accept that it is sometimes a good idea. Note that the arms race example recognises that everyone involved is behaving in a way that is individually rational. But the idea that politicians and regulators, living generally comfortable lives, know better than poor people what is good for them is something I really object to. It reminds me of the Victorian reply to the women’s rights movement: that male relatives should be able to control women’s lives because they could make better decisions than women would make for themselves. Ugh.
To the specific sex example, yes it’s unpleasant to be in that situation, everyone agrees. The problem is that banning payment in sex forces people into situations they find even worse, like homelessness. I would prefer governments to solve these problems constructively, like by building more housing, and said so in a footnote to the main post, but in the meantime we should stop banning poor people from doing the best they can to cope with the world that actually exists.
taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
But it can make sense to take away options they probably wouldn’t want to take anyway (yes, you may be wrong here) but if they exist, it is too tempting for a third party to navigate them into situations where they would be forced to take this option.
To give a specific example, I am happy that I am legally prevented from selling myself into slavery. I’d really hate to do it accidentally, just because I missed something hidden among dozen pages of fine print when signing a phone contract or something like that.
Or, imagine a sleazy landlord, renting a room to an inexperienced poor girl. Suppose she wants to pay with money. But if he is sufficiently smart, he can easily create a trap, when at some moment, using some bullshit contractual penalty, he takes away all her money… and then generously offers that she can pay the next month with sex instead, rather than go homeless. From a near-sighted perspective, yes, having such option is better than automatically going homeless. But the larger picture is that having such laws dramatically increases the motivation of the sleazy landlord to create this trap in the first place, so I would expect such situations to happen often, as some of the landlords would likely create an anonymous online forum to share advice.
That’s what I meant by “you need to argue about that specific case”. Sometimes it is one way, sometimes it is the other way. I disagree with the implied generalization in the article (“when people are in a bad situation and only have bad options, taking one of those options away is wrong and causes suffering”).
It is possible that the world full of pretty girls with one kidney missing offering free sex for a sleepover in a garage might be a better place, all things considered, but we need to look at the details, not just invoke a general principle of “taking options away is always bad and everyone who disagrees is making a logical fallacy or virtue signalling”.
I feel like the mistake the post is pointing out is that people think way too many things are games of chicken, and end up removing poor people’s steering wheels “for their own good”.
I think there really is a general rule that more options is better, and while there are exceptions, they deserve extra scrutiny, especially when making decisions for other people. There’s a reason cars generally come with a steering wheel.
I upvoted it because it makes a very important point: Sometimes, there are no good options, and thus you should be very wary of restricting choice. It’s possible for restricting choice to come out on top, but often we fabricate supposedly good options that aren’t realistically there.
In essence, this is essentially how I see the abortion debates. Often times, pro-life people imagine that the result of an unaborted baby is a living, happy baby, but this is mostly not the likely case.
I have a problem with the generalization… and the accusation that whoever disagrees is making a logical fallacy or signalling virtue… and with the two specific examples.
But yes, it is a true and important and often counter-intuitive idea that—sometimes—removing bad options from people makes their situation worse, because their other options are even worse.
Surprised by the upvotes. This is a textbook example of ignoring the second-order effects and congratulating yourself for being smarter that the others.
Basically, game theory. Having an option taken away (by the past-you) is the winning strategy in the game of Chicken. Making paying for blackmail illegal reduces the incentive of other people to blackmail you. Yes, in certain situations having fewer options is better for you!
If you disagree with a specific case, you need to argue about that specific case. But there is no general rule about why having more options is always obviously better.
EDIT:
(Reformatted the text, maybe the previous version was confusing.)
The game theory example ignores the principal-agent effect. We are not talking about you rationally choosing to give up some of your options. We are talking about someone else, who is not well-aligned with you, taking away your options, generally without input from you.
I have a problem with the generalization. I believe that taking away your options is sometimes good and sometimes bad. You seem to say that it is always bad. (Did I misunderstand that part?)
From that perspective, even someone not well-aligned can make a lucky guess once in a while. Also, it’s not like people make these decisions for others completely randomly. We have the meme “it is bad to use sex as a payment” because many people in the past were in the position where they had to use sex as a payment and they disliked it.
I think I overstated slightly. And I’m focusing on the rationale for taking away options as much as the taking away itself. I’d restate to something like: taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
There’s a discussion further down the thread about arms race dynamics, where you take away options in order to solve a coordination problem, where I accept that it is sometimes a good idea. Note that the arms race example recognises that everyone involved is behaving in a way that is individually rational. But the idea that politicians and regulators, living generally comfortable lives, know better than poor people what is good for them is something I really object to. It reminds me of the Victorian reply to the women’s rights movement: that male relatives should be able to control women’s lives because they could make better decisions than women would make for themselves. Ugh.
To the specific sex example, yes it’s unpleasant to be in that situation, everyone agrees. The problem is that banning payment in sex forces people into situations they find even worse, like homelessness. I would prefer governments to solve these problems constructively, like by building more housing, and said so in a footnote to the main post, but in the meantime we should stop banning poor people from doing the best they can to cope with the world that actually exists.
But it can make sense to take away options they probably wouldn’t want to take anyway (yes, you may be wrong here) but if they exist, it is too tempting for a third party to navigate them into situations where they would be forced to take this option.
To give a specific example, I am happy that I am legally prevented from selling myself into slavery. I’d really hate to do it accidentally, just because I missed something hidden among dozen pages of fine print when signing a phone contract or something like that.
Or, imagine a sleazy landlord, renting a room to an inexperienced poor girl. Suppose she wants to pay with money. But if he is sufficiently smart, he can easily create a trap, when at some moment, using some bullshit contractual penalty, he takes away all her money… and then generously offers that she can pay the next month with sex instead, rather than go homeless. From a near-sighted perspective, yes, having such option is better than automatically going homeless. But the larger picture is that having such laws dramatically increases the motivation of the sleazy landlord to create this trap in the first place, so I would expect such situations to happen often, as some of the landlords would likely create an anonymous online forum to share advice.
It’s not really sufficient to point out that second-order effects exist, one also needs to compare their size to the first-order effects.
That’s what I meant by “you need to argue about that specific case”. Sometimes it is one way, sometimes it is the other way. I disagree with the implied generalization in the article (“when people are in a bad situation and only have bad options, taking one of those options away is wrong and causes suffering”).
It is possible that the world full of pretty girls with one kidney missing offering free sex for a sleepover in a garage might be a better place, all things considered, but we need to look at the details, not just invoke a general principle of “taking options away is always bad and everyone who disagrees is making a logical fallacy or virtue signalling”.
Thanks for the example of chicken, I hadn’t considered it. I have changed my mind about this now.
(Not sure how often this is applicable in real life.)
I feel like the mistake the post is pointing out is that people think way too many things are games of chicken, and end up removing poor people’s steering wheels “for their own good”.
I think there really is a general rule that more options is better, and while there are exceptions, they deserve extra scrutiny, especially when making decisions for other people. There’s a reason cars generally come with a steering wheel.
I upvoted it because it makes a very important point: Sometimes, there are no good options, and thus you should be very wary of restricting choice. It’s possible for restricting choice to come out on top, but often we fabricate supposedly good options that aren’t realistically there.
In essence, this is essentially how I see the abortion debates. Often times, pro-life people imagine that the result of an unaborted baby is a living, happy baby, but this is mostly not the likely case.
Sometimes, yes.
I have a problem with the generalization… and the accusation that whoever disagrees is making a logical fallacy or signalling virtue… and with the two specific examples.
But yes, it is a true and important and often counter-intuitive idea that—sometimes—removing bad options from people makes their situation worse, because their other options are even worse.