I was recently listening to Robin Hanson on Signaling and Self-Deception and he mentions that most of the Social Sciences discoveries haven't been applied back to society.

It wasn’t until a little while I realized, “The reason why it’s so easy to find big improvements in social science is we almost never actually apply them. We don’t actually make the improvements that we could.”

He then goes to mention Prediction Markets as an example. They also came up as a great example in a recent LW question, What are some real life Inadequate Equilibria?

I'm curious about what things we could be doing as a society that have been proved benefitial and we're not doing so far. Either because we're stuck in a bad equilibrium or they haven't reached the general public.

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Dave Orr

100

Here's a list of things that I think would not be controversial among economists and relevant experts but nonetheless seem very unlikely to happen any time soon:

  • Much more free trade -- reduce friction, trade barriers, and tariffs. Consider payments to smooth out pain to short term losers
  • Greatly reduced zoning and housing regulations. Housing stock is artificially expensive (at least in most places in the US, especially the Bay Area) due to excessive local regulations and zoning.

    Also no more rent control. Do you want to make sure there's not enough places for people poor people to live? Because rent control is how you make sure there's not enough places for poor people to live
  • Carbon tax. It's the most efficient way to internalize the global warming costs. It'll never be adopted because the price sensitivity to gasoline is way higher than it is to e.g. electricity, so one blanket number will piss off consumers too much
  • Greatly reduce drug approval costs. Accepting approvals from similar agencies overseas is one approach. Greatly expanded "right to try" rules might be another. A more free market approach might be best.

    Also make almost all (actually all?) illegal drugs legal. The enforcement costs and social costs are ridiculously high, far higher than the benefits from the war on drugs
  • Payments for organ transplants. Supply is much lower than demand, and there's no price signal or reason for people to create more supply, so lots of people will die from a lack of a kidney while everyone else has a spare
  • Charter schools/voucher schools. This might be more controversial among "relevant experts" depending on what group you think that is, but the arguments against are very poor and the arguments for seem much stronger to me
  • Get rid of ~all tax deductions. The mortgage interest deduction is regressive and distortionary. The employer-provided health care deduction is distortionary and locks people into jobs. I personally benefit a ton from the charitable deduction but it's also regressive
  • Get rid of the corporate income tax. We want corporations to make money and invest it. Tax income to people, not to companies
  • Greatly reduce occupational licensing. Some of those may make some sense, but most are just thinly veiled job protection for the existing guild members
  • Shorten copyrights (35 years or life of the creator, whichever is longer?), shorten patents, no software or business method patents

 

I don't think there's a single explanation for why none of those policies seems likely to happen, though at least there's substantial movement on the drug legalization front recently.

[-][anonymous]20

Of course there's a single explanation: in a democracy, everyone gets a vote.  Not 'everyone' knows enough about these subjects to understand why the experts are right.  Moreover, in a representative democracy, there is a second layer where entrenched interests - who guard virtually everything you listed - get to bribe politicians to go against the preferences of their constituents.

I do have to ask about one issue on this list: regarding free trade.  The argument has been made that China applies indirect tariffs to U.S. made goods.  Spe... (read more)

1Dave Orr
I'm sure there are some hard cases wrt free trade, but we could move a long way towards much more free trade without worrying too much about the corner cases (i.e. allow tariffs on those cases).
2[anonymous]
Yes but arguably this isn't a corner case. It's the majority of the trade that matters, to both the usa and china.
3[anonymous]
Opt-out rather than opt-in.  While I would rather cryonics were also opt-out, the point is that by default someone should be opted-in to be an organ donor unless they go out of their way to express a religious preference otherwise.
1Stuart Anderson
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1[anonymous]
post humous or pre?  Blood can't be donated without side effects and pain on the part of the donor.  While a deceased motorcylist doesn't need those organs any longer.
1Stuart Anderson
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1[anonymous]
So this is a different issue. Current medical establishment has decided to declare living bodies "dead" the instant something major breaks they don't know how to fix. Someone is not actually dead for some period of time afterwards, possibly hours, where no possible technology could recover their mind after that. They also have the notion of "brain dead" where again everything else works and a large amount of the brain may still be alive but the wiring for breathing and a few other base reflexes is damaged. No way to fix that so off to the incinerator they go. I strongly feel these processes are barbaric and may one day be seen as outright evil, but nevertheless, working within this framework, organ donation for the bodies that medical systems were going to destroy anyway does make sense.
2Richard_Kennaway
Have autonomous vehicles crash at a rate adjusted to meet the demand for transplants.
1Stuart Anderson
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2Viliam
A dystopian version would be some "rent a biker" scheme, where bikers could get free bikes, but when they die their bodies belong to the sponsor. Given lots of free bikes, it would become a popular hobby.
1Stuart Anderson
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2gilch
Maybe that would incentivize lab-grown organs? Which seems like a better long-term solution anyway.

ChristianKl

80

There should be no attendence requirement for any occupational licensing. Reduce all occupational licensing to tests that can be taken in a few days provided a person has the requisite knowledge. 

This should be enshrined by a federal right to work law. 

Yeah!  I don't want a surgeon who's wasted YEARS in supervised (and unpleasant/difficult to be sure) conditions.  Let them pass the test and pick up a scalpel!

A better reform would be "do away with occupational licensing entirely for many non-critical professions.  For those with high risk, replace it with liability/insurance and reputation mechanisms (which will end up looking like accreditation, or they will be unable to get insurance, but there's at least a chance at diversity of types of accreditation)".  

Surgeons are the motte of occupational licensing; hairdressers are the bailey.

4Dagon
Strong upvote.  And it's reversable too!  Hairdressers are the motte of reducing regulatory hurdles, the huge spectrum of trivial to important is the bailey. Plumbers are a good example of the middle ground - someone untrained and unfamiliar with code can do a lot of damage, and will be long gone before it's discovered.  Requiring a bond is just delegating the regulation to a bonding company.
6[anonymous]
Arguably, the effect of all those years should in some way be measurable.  Otherwise it's irrational to state that those years of indentured servitude made them better.   It might be difficult to test for, just saying in theory if you can't measure it how do you know it's real.  
4ChristianKl
In Germany we don't have any problems with allowing people to operate after passing tests as I described. 

ChristianKl

80

Drug approval denationalization would create an incentive to for regulatory agencies to be faster at approving drugs while still having standards for safety and usefulness for drugs. 

I have a personal belief that a lot of low hanging fruit does not get picked because of we have masses where each benefits a little vs smaller entities with a lot to lose, such as drug companies wanting smaller enforcement. As such the invested minority can outlast the majority in terms of preventing these changes from becoming law.
Do you see other factors having more significance? Further, can we avoid these impasses?

3ChristianKl
If drug companies wanted smaller enforcement then they would favor drug approval denationalization. 
[-][anonymous]20

Why are my appliances allowed to be designed to become landfill? Why isn't there the digital equivalent of putting stuff you don't want on the street for people that do want it?

But there is that digital equivalent, it's called ebay and Craigslist.  I have purchased a used washer and dryer for $100, both worked for over a year after.  I sold my entire desktop PC for parts on ebay a few months back, receiving $600 for 5 year old hardware, and I put the unsellable metal case on the curb and posted it to Craigslist.

There's a couple of factors here. &... (read more)

1Stuart Anderson
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2[anonymous]
Craigslist has a free section. Globally nuclear is also nearly dead.   https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero/
1Stuart Anderson
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1[anonymous]
From wikipedia:  Following the Fukushima accident and consequent pause in approvals for new plants, the target adopted by the State Council in October 2012 became 60 GWe by 2020, with 30 GWe under construction. In 2015 the target for nuclear capacity on line in 2030 was 150 GWe, providing almost 10% of electricity, and 240 GWe in 2050 providing 15%. However, from 2016 to 2018 there was a further hiatus in the new build programme, with no new approvals for at least two years, causing the programme to slow sharply. Delays in the Chinese builds of AP1000 and EPR reactors, together with the bankruptcy in the U.S. of Westinghouse, the designer of the AP1000, have created uncertainties about the future direction. Also some regions of China now have excess generation capacity, and it has become less certain to what extent electricity prices can economically sustain nuclear new build while the Chinese government is gradually liberalising the generation sector. Bolding added by me.  Please view this chart here : https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ Based upon the evidence that       a.  China is greatly slowing their plans       b.  Nuclear power is not economically feasible with updated numbers, as evidenced by lazard's data, for new plants. I think a reasonable conclusion would be that nuclear has no future.  If you disagree,      a.  Where are you getting your evidence from?  Please link.      b.  What reasoning do you use?  If the cost of electricity is higher for nuclear, what is going to justify it?  National governments can fund inefficient projects but even inefficient governments have limits on what they are willing to throw away (versus a cheaper option on the market) and they have to have a vendor to buy from to buy the reactors.  

Why are my appliances allowed to be designed to become landfill? Why isn't there the digital equivalent of putting stuff you don't want on the street for people that do want it?

There are digital ways to do that depending on location. In Berlin where I live Ebay Kleinanzeigen/Craigslist/A facebook group for that purpose are all ways where you can give away stuff for free if other people want it. 

ChristianKl

60

Forced choice for whether one wants to be an organ donor or not. Part of applying for passports or driving licenses should include a form where a person has to chose whether or not to be an organ donor. This maximises both moral concerns of not taking away people's organs without consent and increases the organ donations over the default of opt-in.

Vanvidum

40

Adopting Japanese style planning & zoning alongside European models of social housing organization & finance would unlock a considerable degree of economic growth in a lot of Anglophone countries. It'd also have the additional benefits of reducing the carbon intensity of housing and transport through greater density, and make efficient public transit easier to finance and develop. It also would in the long-term stabilize urban housing costs and reduce the precarity of low-income households, while enabling a larger number of people to benefit from higher big-city wages through more dynamic housing stock growth.

As it is, we are locking people out of the places where their labor is most valuable and where they would have the smallest environmental impact to the benefit of (relatively wealthy) incumbent property owners. This equilibrium is difficult to change when there's expansive local control over land use and housing development, as it's much easier for narrow coalitions of property owners to dominate those nominally democratic decision-making processes, and because local constituents have little incentive to take the utility of newcomers or the metro region into account.

[-][anonymous]10

Yes.  Note that the general idea that "California pays the most but once you factor in state income tax and housing costs, it's about the same" has been true since about the late 1970s.  

I agree with you completely, just:

       a.  Hard to see how it's going to change if it hasn't changed in 40 years

       b.  Competing jurisdictions are a thing.  Theoretically some other city elsewhere will gain a comparative advantage if they have the right building codes and gain a critical mass of tech co... (read more)

JohnMyers

20

There are indications that there are enormous deadweight losses in many sectors, which are not fixed because of political constraints. Eli Dourado wrote a great post about this: https://elidourado.com/blog/move-the-needle-on-progress/, and I wrote a short one for Works in Progress: https://worksinprogress.co/progress-studies-the-hard-question/.

There are various different social engineering techniques from public policy, political economy and related fields for smart policy design (not campaigning) that could be tried by policy entrepreneurs to engineer changes from these inadequate equilibria, but those techniques seem little known outside those fields. I'm working with a few others to summarize them and can supply more links if people are interested.

Srdjan Miletic

20

Make nuclear our main source of power. It's green, safe, sustainable, cheap and reliable. We could have done this in the 60's/70's as France did but irrational fears of nuclear power and subsequent over-regulation and lack of gov support killed it in the US and UK.

[-][anonymous]20

It's not rational to think it will happen.  I agree nuclear has advantages, but it doesn't come close to penciling in.

Srdjan Miletic

10

Instituting rule of law in foreign policy. In many countries foreign policy is essentially at the discretion of the executive. Insofar as it is controlled by the legislature, it's controlled through committees and reporting requirements rather than actually courts and rules of conduct. Imagine if the prime minister could choose to kill whoever they wanted and was only contrainted by the threat of parliamentary sanction. That's basically the status qou for foreign policy at the moment.

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The model of "applying" discoveries to society, or things "we" could do is at best misleading here.  Society is mostly self-regulating, not controlled by outside.  And even more not controlled by any "we" that I'm knowingly part of.

EMH isn't perfect, but it does apply here, in the sense that truly low-hanging fruit has already been incorporated.  Anything society is doing wrong or suboptimally (which there are PLENTY of) have pretty strong forces maintaining the inefficiency.

The fact that some equilibrium is inadequate does not imply that the adequate equilibrium is reachable.

Thanks for sharing Dagon, you made me realize a couple of things! I never thought about EMH applying in this situation and that some adequate equilibriums might not be reachable without a very large change.

I still think some of the examples shared by others might be still partially useful to think about when deciding who to vote or discussing issues with other people.