[EM] Re : Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model

[Juho Laatu]

On 9.11.2011, at 11.45, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 2011/11/9 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>

> Utility example:
> - There are two alternatives. A) One person will lose $10000, others will not lose anything. B) All will lose some equal small amount, so that the sum of losses will be $10001. The point is that if we use utilities, let's not use the sum of utilities as the criterion.
> 
> Money is not utility. Almost anyone will tell you that utility is not linear in money; this simple fact will mean that a utility-based calculation will always have more of an egalitarian tendency than a money-based calculation. In fact, you can make it as egalitarian as you could reasonably want by deciding how nonlinear your utility model is.

Yes, I agree, money is not directly utility, especially if you talk about large and small sums like here. This example should however work also with pure utilities, maybe e.g. with "dissatisfaction hormone levels" of the citizens. I guess the key point in the utility examples was that in many cases one actually wants to have also reasonably equal utilities and/or one wants to maximize the lowest utilities, in addition to having high sum of utilities.

Juho




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