More or less out of the blue it occurred to me that the ability of a majoritarian government to supply goods that are positive externalities dependend critically and quite straightforwardly on the distribution of utility functions across the population.
I did a little googling and it turns out that back in the 70s someone had published almost exactly the same math I had jotted down.
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Ideas certainly aren't scarce. Only the ones that we attach ourselves to seem to share that characteristic.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes. When I was nearly done with my thesis, I found a source that had covered exactly the same ground... in 1917. It was disspiriting.
ReplyDeleteI've written a blog post only to find a paper pretty convincingly refuting everything I said.
ReplyDeleteNot quite the same, but still.