Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan: The Calculus of Consent After 25 Years

Gordon Tullock is an economist and professor emeritus of Law and Economics at George Mason University, and is best known for his work on public choice theory.
James Buchanan is a Nobel Prize winning economist who is also widely recognized for his work in the field of public choice theory and constitutional economics.
Tullock and Buchanan co-authored The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy in 1962. In it, they laid the groundwork for what is today known as public choice theory -- the application of economic thinking to political issues.
In this lecture, given to mark their book's 25th anniversary in 1987, Tullock and Buchanan talk about the impact of the Calculus of Consent on political and economic academia. Richard E. Wagner, currently the director of economics graduate programs at George Mason University, also comments.
Download the .mp3 version of this lecture here: bit.ly/JuoYgd

[@congressionalresearchinsti3897]

22:19 "The conceptualization of politics as a very complex EXCHANGE PROCESS" and "extending the economists model of utility maximizing behavior to behavior in politics." "ours was the first book to really integrate these two separate elements into what we hope was a coherent logical structure."

[@Mens_Sana23]

Great. I hope their ideas get mainstream again soon.

[@ekonomia_podatki_teoria_gier]

still important

[@Coutsify]

I think that utility as a concept is not dumb, what is dumb is to quantify it. After all, if you're thirsty, the Pepsi is a lot more likely to satisfy you (more utility) than the hamburger, especially if there are no other drinks available. Once your thirst is quenched, hunger may take the upper hand, in which case the hamburger starts to have more utility to you. So utility (value) is subjective and depends on a need or want that is never static and that is relative to other needs or wants.

[@congressionalresearchinsti3897]

35:55 "In one sense our work was simply reducing majority rule from its level of sacrosanct status." Their goal was to give power to the very interested minority - "individual utility maximization" - which turned out to be that the more powerful the individual, the more utility they can maximize.

[@nicholasbaum8776]

Do you guys just go from Buchanan video to Buchanan video and spew the same nonsense

[@nicklovespolitics3159]

@@nicholasbaum8776 Explain 'nonsense', or are you just an acolyte looking to only 'discuss' based on hominem.

[@congressionalresearchinsti3897]

1:43 "my interest in political EXCHANGE"!!! Tullock and Buchanan are the kings of logrolling. But note that logrolling relies on public voting (not secret). And so legislators can change votes based on their interests. But it doesn't stop anyone else from jumping into this pool. So public votes can also be traded for cash - or intimidated via threats of cash or other means.

[@Myndir]

However, occasionally economists revert away from ordinal utility. Much of welfare economics is infected with this idea, because people won't accept the idea that there can be no comparisons of relative evaluation e.g. they refuse to accept an economics where "We can say, scientifically, that a rich man values $100 less than a poor man" is false. Lionel Robbins exposed welfare economists on this a long while back, and took the position that economics needs ethics to be relevant to policy.

[@Myndir]

It depends on how you cash it out. Economists since Menger and the latter marginalists should have abandoned cardinal utility (where there are "utils" and suchlike) and moved on to ordinal utility (I value buying hamburgers with my first $5, Pepsi with my next $5 etc.) which is a much more barren but much less silly concept.

[@MrGreeneggsnham]

Utility is the dumbest economic concept. I value a hamburger 100 more utils than I value a can of Pepsi. This makes no sence what-so-ever.

[@marcreinhardt3759]

utility is just a concept to make use of if you prefer a hamburger to a can of pepsi. the # of utils is meaningless except in a few cases of economic theory