[EM] Distance measure--Are issue-position differences additive?

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

For a particular voter and a particular candidate, are their 
issue-differences on different issues additive? In other words, are a 
candidate's disutilities, for a particular voter, on various issues 
additive?

If yes, then city block distance is the more correct measure of distance.

If no, then Euclidean distance is the more correct measure of distance.

I suggest that, in principle, a candidate's various issue-disutilities for a 
particular voter can be expressed in terms of one kind of disutility, and 
added.

Money:

Placing a monetary value on all kinds of damages, including death, is 
routine in the court system.

So, if a candidate is going to kill lots of people in other countries, and 
is also going to cost you money with his fiscal policies, and is going to 
make you less safe with his war-on-drugs policies, these disutilities can 
all be put in terms money.


Loss of life-expectancy:

If a candidate's policies cause you to have less money, then his policies 
are reducing your choices, when making the right choice would maximize your 
life-expectancy. So his policies reduce your life-expectancy, assuming that 
you make good choices.

If his policies make the streets less safe, that reduces your life 
expectancy.

If his policies kill many people in other countries, those people have lost 
years of thieir life. Actual loss of years of life. Whatever their life 
expectancies were before the killilngs, they've lost that amount of 
life-expectancy.

A candidate's positions on polllution and job-safety can cause injuries and 
illness as well as death, but not only do those reduce life-expectancy, but 
the lower the quality of life. The notion of life-expectancy could be 
generalized to one that take into account the quality of life as well as its 
expected length.

It seems to me that life-expectancy is the better than money, since it's on 
a more solid basis to estimate the life-expectancy loss from monetary loss 
than to try to place a monetary value on loss of life.

But the point is that the various disutilities of a candidates, via various 
issue differences, can, in principle, all be put in terms of one undesirable 
thing.

So I suggest that city-block distance is the better measure of distances in 
issue-space.

With city-block distance, in spatial models, the CW always maximizes social 
utility.

But, as I mentioned before, the CW maximizes social utility with Euclidean 
distance, under the conditions that are usually assumed in spatial models.

Mike Ossipoff

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