My friend (although we’ve never met) and fellow economist Jon Murphy stated recently, in a comment on co-blogger Pierre Lemieux’s recent post:
When there are two options moving you away from your desired path, choosing the one that moves you away slightly slower is not really any better.
I challenged Jon, writing:
Yes it is. Think on the margin.
Jon is great at thinking on the margin. I thought he would agree. But he didn’t. Instead he wrote:
I am, David. My point is that both options as presented lead me further away from my goal. That implies it is time to search out a new margin or do nothing.
Commenter Vivian Darkbloom came in on my side of the issue, writing:
Being on the 30 yard line is not the same as being on the 10 yard line!
To which Jon responded:
Agreed. But when my goal is to be in the endzone, one play that drops me back to the 40 and another that drops me back to the 50 are both counterproductive.
Yes, both are counterproductive, but in economics we often compare two bad alternatives and choose the less bad. Thinking on the margin works here too. 40 is closer than 50.
Now, if Jon had argued that the two alternatives are no different, then he would have a point. But he made quite clear that that’s not what he’s arguing.
Note: Pierre raises another issue in the comments, in response, and it’s a good point for Pierre to make. But it isn’t relevant to my response to Jon.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Jun 5 2024 at 3:06pm
Allow me to try and clarify my point:
Yours and Vivian’s comments would be correct if the choice was only between two options. If we had to choose between one or the other, then yes, on the margin, the one that sets to back the least is the least bad option.
However, my point is that, in American politics, we do not have that binary choice. Rather, we have many choices, including the option not to chose at all (not vote). We can adjust along the margin that does relatively no harm, or is preferable. Will it ultimately have no effect? Almost certainly. But at least I can say I did not choose an option that I did not like when preferable options were out there.
In short:
The choice is not between A and B. The choice is between A, B, and C, where C is strictly prefered over A, and A is weakly prefered over B. Choosing A is not helpful when C is right there.
Thus why I reject David’s (and Block’s, and Vivian’s) argument. Not all the margins are being considered.
Now, all that said: David, Walter Block, and Vivian are all smarter than me along many, many margins. While I reject the argument, I do not think we’re disagreeing on the underlying principle.
TMC
Jun 5 2024 at 6:56pm
Jon, your choice is effectively between Trump and Biden, as one of these two will be next president whether you vote for either or none. Best vote for the one with the better policies as that’s all that will affect you. BTW, way to bet is almost always with Vivian Darkbloom.
Jon Murphy
Jun 6 2024 at 8:31am
No, it isn’t; that’s a false framing of the situation. That’s my point. Since it is extremely likely one or the other will be President (barring something extremely unusual), and since my vote (or lack thereof) will have no affect, then there is no choice about who will be president. It’s out of my control. Might as well say that I get to choose about the sun rising or the weather today.
My choice is will I vote (and then who will I vote for). It is incorrect to set up the problem as between Biden and Trump because that is not the relavant margin. Included in my choice sets are to not chose either one.
David Henderson
Jun 6 2024 at 10:07am
Thanks for clarifying. I agree with this, which is why you shouldn’t have made the 30-yard, 40-yard point.
Jon Murphy
Jun 6 2024 at 10:23am
Yes, I see how that metaphor confused the point I was trying to make.
Craig
Jun 5 2024 at 7:16pm
I’d suggest that in addition to being a swing state one might consider whether the liberian bloc of voters would be enough to swing the election.
A side note in this discussion is ranked choice voting schemes where you can reveal your preference and if that candidate should lose, be able to throw your weight to another candidate.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 6 2024 at 3:07pm
Craig: But a single voter has no “weight to throw.” Twice an infinitesimally small probability is still infinitesimal. Moreover (but I am not totally sure this works mathematically), if ranked-choice voting gives every other 1.5 vote instead of 1, the fact that every other voter (except those who make on their complicated ballot!) gets 1.5 vote does not increase your weight.
Richard W Fulmer
Jun 5 2024 at 3:51pm
No American party consistently supports any of the classical liberal ideals of self-ownership, individual freedom and responsibility, free markets, freedom to contract, limited government, the separation of powers, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy. While asking which candidate comes closest to supporting those ideals is reasonable, so is asking which candidate will do the most to bring them into disrepute.
MarkW
Jun 6 2024 at 6:34am
The best libertarian argument I could make for Trump is that the Supreme Court justices he nominated do believe in these things. Or, at least, the framers of the Constitution believed in those things, and Trump’s justices are generally willing to take the framers at their word. An originalist approach to jurisprudence tends to lead to libertarian results. It’s one of the few things that actually does in the early 21st century. This is not a trivial thing.
However, casting a presidential vote is not at all like casting the deciding vote as a member of a small committee. My vote is not going to turn any presidential election ever — not even in the swing state where I live. It’s not even a matter of probabilities — a vote total that’s sufficiently close would ultimately be decided by court decisions about which ballots to count (absentee ballots with missing signatures or illegible postmarks, or incompletely filled circles etc). So casting a vote for president is a symbolic act, not a consequential one. The outcome will be the same regardless of what I do — the only question for me is how I will end up feeling about my choice.
steve
Jun 6 2024 at 11:05am
Yes, a single vote wont matter. However, I am pretty sure that Block didnt write his article hoping to persuade just one voter. If, arguendo, he persuaded all libertarians to accept his position it could change the outcome of the election.
Steve
Monte
Jun 6 2024 at 11:48am
I wonder if a ballot option of None Of The Above (NOTA) might be more palatable to a majority of voters this presidential election? On the margin, it would certainly mollify those dissatisfied with either candidate. It’s not without precedent.
Any legislation on how to proceed beyond NOTA “winning” the election would be left entirely to the better judgement of Congress, such as it is.
Vivian Darkbloom
Jun 8 2024 at 3:57pm
Just a brief note to the person who deleted my comment to this post: Because of you, I’m out of here. I’ve no time for an organization that can’t tolerate opposing views and honest debate. I hope that you are not representative of the organization as a whole, but you are not doing the reputation of Liberty Fund any favor.
Viv
Lauren Landsburg, Econlib Ed.
Jun 8 2024 at 4:28pm
There’s no evidence of any of your comments being removed. I’ve looked in the spam folder and the trash folder and there is nothing there written by you. Is it possible that you never hit Submit?
We do not remove comments over content.
We did have some computer trouble yesterday. Some areas of the website had to be restored. It is possible that your comment got caught in that restoration. You are welcome to resubmit it.
Lauren
Vivian Darkbloom
Jun 8 2024 at 5:42pm
It is not conceivable that that comment just disappeared by itself. It was on your site for more than two hours, as well as a response to it by Mark W.
Amy WIllis
Jun 8 2024 at 6:44pm
Dear Vivian,
Alas, I have no record of your original comment. WordPress treated us to an unexpected outage yesterday (mid-day EDT). If it was during that time, our focus was on that, and we apologize for any comments that may have been affected. I have never disallowed one of your comments, and have always appreciated the. (Hence previous offer for you to write your own posts for us; the offer still stands.) I do hope you’ll stay with us.
Vivian Darkbloom
Jun 8 2024 at 7:07pm
Amy,
Thanks for the belated though, and not that I would be inclined to do so; however, neither you nor anyone else at Econlog has ever offered that I write my own posts for this site. Perhaps that’s one of the communications that mysteriously disappeared after having been up on your site for a while! If you should happen to retrieve it, perhaps you can post it here for all to see. Another reason for me to lose confidence here…
Bye, Bye,
Viv
Amy WIllis
Jun 8 2024 at 7:21pm
We’ll be sorry to see you go. I will try to resurrect that email.
P.S. submissions@libertyfund.org for content, or feel free to email me directly.
Vivian Darkbloom
Jun 8 2024 at 6:05pm
Lauren,
You just removed my response to your comment. The comment you just deleted stated: “There is no way that comment disappeared all by itself. It appeared for over two hours along with a response to it by Mark W”.
That wasn’t removed because of it’s content? Maybe you should let your readers judge for themselves.
Dylan
Jun 8 2024 at 8:47pm
Vivian,
The original comment and Lauren and Amy’s responses are still visible to me. I think it is more likely that these are technical glitches rather than any censorship.I know I regularly have an issue here where new comments don’t show up unless I use a private browsing session. And I see other glitches with comments from time to time as well
Like Lauren, I’ve appreciated your comments over the years and find you add value to the site. I hope this was just a bad day and some frustration and you don’t leave the site permanently, as we would all be a little poorer for it.
Lauren Landsburg
Jun 9 2024 at 2:07am
Vivian: I did not delete your comment. As I had emailed you, it had been automatically held in Pending status by our software. Amy is the EconLog moderator, not me. Once she had a chance to review it, she not only didn’t delete it; she published it at
https://www.econlib.org/thinking-on-the-margin-in-politics/#comment-347034
Comments are closed.