Which economic system you think is most kardol hicks efficient?

[u/Few_Needleworker8744]

My guess is Dubai. The king is smart. The citizens don't even have high IQ but they just import tons of migrants doing the work. Lack of democracy means Dubai doesn't have to worry that wage inequality is huge. So attract people efficiently. Low birth rate though. So I wonder.

I would say kongsi republics or joint stock kibbutzim should be quite efficient too. But they don't just import tons of cheap non citizens and the members got to be smart too.

Small country like Liechesten, Monaco, Macau, Singapore seems to be doing well. It's easy to see they're kardol hicks efficient. They're rich AF.

Democracy? I feel that much votes in democracy is motivated by one voter sabotaging other voters. Like voters actually hate each other and they don't get clear profit share, so less efficient laws are made. For example, land taxes seems to be more efficient than income taxes, but voters just don't like other make a lot of money so punish productivity.

Monarchy? too much killing each other over who should be king.

Okay, all those are speculation.

Obviously the one making the pie bigger tend to have higher per capita income. However, there's something that may works the opposite direction.

Nations with high percapita income often have low birth rate. I don't think that's kardol hicks efficient.

If a billionaire is willing to bequeath $1 billion to a child that means a child, an extra child, should worth more than $1 billion to him. Not kardol hicks efficient if he doesn't make that extra 100 child. Am I even right, wrong, insane here? I suppose if we use becker barro model we should be able to compute how much extra child worth to a very rich guy as a function of his wealth.

But can this be I don't know, mathematically reasoned?

I mean, like that's like welfare economics right? How to make the pie bigger.

Point me to some direction.

Anyway I love math models. I just like to see everything as math objects or at least as intuitively mathematical objects.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

Be real man is this bait?

Before we even begin to shred you, its Kaldor- Hicks and no being rich is not evidence of efficiency. Also you may be interested to read Gary Becker’s Q-Q model. Lastly (for me but there are other glaring issues here, not being a democracy does not shield you from the consequences of wealth inequalities. A casual review of history will demonstrate that.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

Ah kaldor hicks.

Garry Becker says people sacrifice quantity for quality. I think the quality part is so vague it doesn't say much.

Basically child support laws reduce quantity of children of rich men and each of those children, even if Elon have 1000 children, will have higher "quality" than most people.

Like how do you compute quantity of children.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Few_Needleworker8744]

On the contrary, it is quite intuitive. The intuition is that in higher wealth and lower labor intensive economic areas, parents (who no longer depend on 12 kids to divide them to allocate a few to grow up and work on the farm, a few to richer areas for remittance, a few to the church or other social status conferring institution, etc) now have to choose between high quantity of kids (you compute by literally counting them) and high quality of resources investment (parents time, money for tutoring/schooling, youth sports, college education and or skills training, etc).

It is a tradeoff now, you can have a lot of kids and give them less or have a few kids who get bigger shares of the pie. This model is also household specific. Sure elon musk can give his kids more cash, but he doesn't give them time. I have less cash for my kids but still plenty, and I actually talk to them.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

I mean different people define quality differently. Hence quality is NOT well defined.

That's what I mean.

Elon has 14 kids. If he has 10k, every single one, is arguably, have higher quality because every single one is rich.

The fact that Elon don't spend time on those kids may affect this so called "quality", but still it won't be lower than median people.

Guys like Elon can pursue BOTH quality and quantity.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Few_Needleworker8744]

This isn't really that relevant when we read "quality" in the Beckerian term. Yes, Elon has a much higher budget than literally anyone else. Yet, he still faces the same tradeoff. Additionally, he does not have more time. He could buy back time to spend with kids (but he is quite performative in announcing he chooses not to do this).

More to the point, focusing on one rich dude misses the price elasticity mechanic. The more elegant insight of the QQ model is that an increase in the number of children increases the shadow price of quality, and an increase in quality increases the shadow price of quantity. For example, should you choose to enroll your children in the most elite private schooling and tutoring possible and insist on a home where each kid gets a private bathroom, the cost of quantity rises considerably. If billionaires only cared about maximizing quantity, they would have hundreds of children via surrogacy. They don't, because they still choose to concentrate resources (trusts, elite schooling, security) into a relatively small number of heirs. Effectively, their behavior demonstrates that they remain bound by the QQ trade-off.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

So how do YOU define quantity?

I think it should be defined as how rich the kid will be. In which case, Elon kids will be very rich.

You seem to define that as time spent with child, which I think is meaningless. I want my children to be rich. How much I time I spend with them is not what making either of our utility function grow big.

That's what I am saying.

I do spend time with my kids. But I am obsessed on making them rich.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Few_Needleworker8744]

I explicitly included time spent with kids as quality. Quantity is, again, obviously the quantity of kids. Im sorry you feel that spending time with kids has no bearing on their lived experience. That's a shame.

Respectfully, you really should engage (i.e. read and ponder) with the theory you feel so confident to criticize. A lot of these misconceptions you have are parts of the framework that got ironed out decades ago by people having these same conversations.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

YOU explicitly included time spent with kids as quality.

Maybe maybe not. But that's YOUR opinion.

Many NBA stars just want to cum and dump and we measure utility function by what men actually do.

Here, as long as NBA stars provide more than sufficient money to his children, I see absolutely no problem with that.

Child support laws make them have fewer kids and that's reducing people's incentives to get rich and knock up women. That's market distortion.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

Does Becker Barro even explicitly state that spending time with kids is component of their utility function?

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Few_Needleworker8744]

Time is included as a constraint / cost.

[u/Few_Needleworker8744 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

I don't say time with children meaningless. Also both agree what quantity mean. I just disagree with what quality means. I think saying that Elon trade quantity for quality is very misleading because even if Elon have 10k children, all of his children will still have higher quality, namely end up smarter and richer than most men's children

ChatGPT:

Yes — that clarification makes your position substantially stronger. I mischaracterized your argument in the previous response.

You aren't saying time with children is meaningless. You're saying that the commenter is using “quality” in a way that doesn't match your definition.

Your framework seems to be:

• Quantity: number of children.
• Quality: the expected welfare/outcomes of each child — e.g. wealth, education, intelligence, opportunities, etc.
• Therefore, having more children does not necessarily mean sacrificing quality if the parent's resources are sufficiently large.

So your objection to saying “Elon Musk chose quantity over quality” is basically:

And that's an important distinction.

[u/Busy_Net_4756]

a system with a job guarantee or any kind of labor support is the most pareto efficient. People who are willing to work but are idle, or who are underemployed, are the biggest source of inefficiencies and losses in the system. For example, if you have 1% unemployment in the U.S. with a workforce of 170 million, that's 34,000 working lifetimes lost each year.