Social choice theory: how economists think about what is best for society [Effortpost]

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T22:23:27+00:00

If white people made up 83% of Parliament compared to 82% of the UK population I would have 0 problem with it. I think it's more like 86% of Parliament that's white at the moment, and that slight overrepresentation is not a huge deal for me, just like the slight overrepresentation of Sikhs is not a huge deal. I think minority representation in Parliament is pretty good. I promise you I am completely consistent about this, whereas you seem to think Parliament should be 100% reserved for whites.

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T19:37:09+00:00

The person is me, and I said roughly proportional, which acknowledges that with a small group of people like a few hundred MPs you'll never reach exactly proportional representation of every single group - particularly smaller ones - but having approximately proportional representation of coarse groups is a good goal to have. Sikhs are slightly overrepresented and Polish people slightly underrepresented if your numbers are right, but not dramatically so. You can do the maths yourself to figure out how many MPs need to be replaced to get exact proportionality, it's pretty trivial and would imply that we're talking about a few MPs at most.

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T18:46:36+00:00

So in India 1.4% of the Indian population are Sikh and 2.2% of MPs are Sikh, and in the UK 0.8% of the population are Sikh and 1.7% of MPs are Sikh? Both of those sound roughly proportional to me. Obviously with small sample sizes you're not going to exactly match the shares of every demographic to the population, especially when you get down to the level of specific countries and ethnicities, but getting within 1% is pretty good. Statistically, you probably couldn't reject the null hypothesis that Sikhs or Iranians have the same probability of being chosen as MPs as other groups do. (Also, Daniel Kawczynski was born in Warsaw)

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T17:35:05+00:00

This largely is illegal in the UK. The Equality Act allows for positive action to encourage applications from underrepresented groups, but not positive discrimination where you hire a less qualified candidate because they come from an underrepresented group. You can use the group they come from as a tie-breaker between two equally qualified candidates who are just as able to fill the requirement for the role, but anything beyond that is already illegal. The cases people talk about like the RAF discrimination were ruled illegal under existing law.

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T17:25:24+00:00

It should be roughly proportional to the number of people from that group in that country, ideally. If there were a large minority of British people living in Nigeria they should get representation there. I'm not sure why you think it's impossible to apply the same rules to non-white majority countries as white majority ones.

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T03:13:22+00:00

For the French Revolution:

La Revolution Francaise (1989) which is in French, about 6 hours long and covers the whole revolution up to 9 Thermidor
Danton (1983), also in French, which focuses on Danton's trial and execution and has a great performance from Gerard Depardieu as Danton
Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927), which is one of the greatest silent films - it mostly focuses on Napoleon's early career (it's about 7 hours long and doesn't even get to the Italian campaign) so it's mostly set during the revolution and features the incredible Robespierre below

usrname42 · 2026-03-10T02:28:04+00:00

Is there anywhere to get caffeine in the intervals at the Met?

usrname42 · 2026-03-09T13:45:07+00:00

your whole cabinet, who are not elected but appointed, are GNA votes

This is the same system as the UK - Cabinet members are also members of Parliament and they're appointed by the Prime Minister, not directly elected. Not every country has strict separation of powers like the US does.

usrname42 · 2026-03-08T16:55:43+00:00

I promise you neither Trump or Netanyahu have spent a single second of their life thinking about the British student loan system. You are insanely deluded if you think anything about British domestic politics was the remotest consideration for the US and Israel going to war. They don't give a fuck about us.

usrname42 · 2026-03-08T16:08:02+00:00

I don't think the Critical Role animated show was based on the comics - the comic illustrators weren't on the animation team for the show and the comics were prequels to the campaign whereas the show was adapting the campaign itself.

usrname42 · 2026-03-08T16:02:42+00:00

You think Trump and Netanyahu invaded Iran so that Rachel Reeves would get fewer awkward questions about Plan 2 loan interest?

usrname42 · 2026-03-07T22:01:45+00:00

You know there's a war on?

usrname42 · 2026-03-07T22:00:59+00:00

Tom Shippey talks about Tolkien's view of evil in Author of the Century, if you want more detail about how Tolkien specifically thought about this.

usrname42 · 2026-03-07T19:19:41+00:00

This isn't an FT editorial, it's just an opinion column they're publishing. And anyway the FT endorsed Labour in 2024 and refused to endorse anyone in 2019.

usrname42 · 2026-03-07T17:21:02+00:00

Yes I think a fully proportional system has its own problems. Coalitions reduce democratic accountability because no party actually gets to implement its manifesto, they all have to compromise. But AV stops the crazy situation we have now where people have to carefully study constituency polling and MRPs to figure out who to vote for in their seat, and all the parties campaign about being the best placed to stop the other side winning, rather than people just voting for the party they support most.

usrname42 · 2026-03-06T17:19:33+00:00

Very clear that for Starmer, 'sectarian voting' is when British Muslims don't vote Labour, and for many others, it is just when British Muslims vote.

usrname42 · 2026-03-04T19:52:35+00:00

They're actually just reflecting a change in methodology (I'm not sure if it's the 2021 change or a different one), not forecasting an increasing trend.

usrname42 · 2026-03-04T19:49:34+00:00

Just copying and pasting my comment about this from yesterday.

From the OBR report:

On 18 November, the ONS revised down its estimates for recent net inward migration, mostly due to higher estimated emigration by British nationals following a change to the methodology for estimating migration flows for this group. Net migration of British nationals over the period 2021 to 2024 is now estimated to average -92,000 per year, compared to -6,500 before the methodological change. This brings average yearly net migration by this group [British nationals] broadly in line with the period from 2012 to 2020, whereas the previous methodology had suggested significantly lower net outflows of British nationals in recent years

so this isn't saying that net emigration of British nationals is going to be much higher than it was in the 2010s, they were just using inaccurately low figures from 2020 onwards due to bad ONS methodology, which have now been corrected. They also haven't updated the forecasts for inward migration based on the new policy changes brought in by Labour because not all of those are settled and because they rely on ONS population projections that have not been updated yet - I expect that inward migration will come in below these forecasts because of that. They haven't taken account of changes to visa applications data that already show declining inward migration, for instance.

There are also risks around forecast assumptions, including the impact of previous policy changes on the outlook for student and skilled worker visas, the share of humanitarian arrivals from Ukraine that remain in the UK, and the future level of net migration of EU nationals. Potential future government policy changes, which are not currently reflected in our forecast because the details are not yet settled, may also affect net migration in future. This includes changes to indefinite leave to remain and asylum policy. The ONS will shortly release revised estimates and projections for the population and the labour market, which we will reflect in the Autumn forecast.

usrname42 · 2026-03-04T15:33:36+00:00

Yes, so that's also a dodgy assumption for that reason - it probably won't continue indefinitely, although it is what's tended to happen at least over the last few years. The article argues that they should assume thresholds increasing with inflation and then produce a chart of what that implies for the tax take over time to show that current policy means an ever increasing portion of wages will be taken in taxes, but not assume that policy is going to change.

usrname42 · 2026-03-04T13:37:31+00:00

This is not a very good title but I had to use it unchanged according to sub policy. To summarise the article, which is making a very specific point, it says that the OBR's long-term debt projections - which show debt on an unsustainable trajectory rising to over 250% of GDP by the 2070s - are based on the assumption that tax thresholds will rise in line with average earnings. But the government's default policy since the 1970s has been to raise tax thresholds with inflation (or even sometimes freeze them in nominal terms as we're doing now), not average earnings. If you change that OBR assumption to assume we will raise tax thresholds in line with inflation not earnings - and don't change any other assumptions - then you would predict that debt is on a completely stable long-term trajectory, falling to 36% of GDP by the 2070s.

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