The Soapbox

Joined: 10/29/2001 Posts: 2909
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What's this?

There's also a psych experiment pitting 'traditional economic theory'

vs "fairness" or if you look at it a different way, 'spite'.

They set up 2 people over a phone line...or computer chat, I forget which. One person had $10. That person got to decide how that $10 was split between him/her self and the person on the other end of the line. HOWEVER, the person on the other end of the line had to APPROVE of the split....or they both got nothing.

Standard economic theory would say that person A should give $9 to him/her self, and $1 to the person on the other end of the line (ignoring pennies for the thought), and the person on the other end SHOULD SAY "yeah, that's fine...$1 is better than the nothing I'll get if i reject the deal".

But psychology / spite showed that the person on the other end VERY OFTEN DID reject that deal. Don't give me $1 and keep $9 for yourself!!! Screw you! I'd rather have nothing!

Now I don't know if the experiment would have turned out differently if the figures were $900,000 and $100,000. Would the decider turn down THAT MUCH money, even though it would still be proportionally very unfair?

And I also don't know what view this experiment really supports. For me, I don't want this bill passed because of both fairness AND deficit issues. My wife and I will probably end up with some more money in our pockets, but not enough for me to say "yeah, give it to me, while the deficit swells and the billionaires get 2,000 times as much"

To me, the plan (and your response to it) feels too much like a bribe. "How much do we have to give you to get you to shut up and smile as we give my friends A WHOLE LOT MORE" Or, even more cynically "how much do we have to give to the masses in order for them to support US getting millions?"

(In response to this post by Hoo23)

Posted: 12/14/2017 at 08:47AM

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