“Ha, commitment mechanism??? You’re trying to commit your future self. Your future self is the only person who can observe the outcome. I see the odds of them sticking to the unenforceable commitment as slim. I think the number of people who fail to break habits that they perceive to be detrimental is evidence of the fallibility of such mechanisms.”

If you don’t buy the chocolate, or buy a smaller portion, then when your future self goes to consume it they are constrained – that is a commitment mechanism. In my mind that is one of the main reasons why small portions are only slightly cheaper than large portions of choc.

“I’m not saying your moral framework should change. But bear in mind that even some utilitarians feel differently about happiness to most economists. Saying that people don’t care about happiness is, as I’m sure you’re aware, only true under some assumptions about the nature of happiness.”

Aha and … . I have no real interest in discussing the “moral framework” here unless we discuss tangible alternatives. Why? I AM discussing a conclusion here, I am applying value judgments. Saying that there are potentially other value judgments doesn’t really further the discussion 😀

Give me a framework where these people value the other persons happiness.

I’ll give you one – when they think the other person is too stupid to do what they want to do. If that is the case I am happy to keep the claim that they “don’t value the happiness of other people” in my own value ladden post 😀

I’m not saying your moral framework should change. But bear in mind that even some utilitarians feel differently about happiness to most economists. Saying that people don’t care about happiness is, as I’m sure you’re aware, only true under some assumptions about the nature of happiness.

Originally I was going to write about time inconsistency in this post, but instead I decided to take a position against it and see what you guys say – and you guys have definitely provided.

@rauparaha

I am not digging at public servants – hell last time I talked about public servants I defended them 😀 . Furthermore, this complaint had nothing to do with public servants did it?

Also I am allowed to willfully ignore other arguments in my post – we have close to zero cost for commenting and writing on other blog (or even on this blog for other authors) so if I miss an argument someone else can bring it up. It isn’t like I’m writing anything authoritative 😛 . However to reiterate, I don’t understand how this post attacks public servants at all.

In net terms I am against regulating this storetype. I realise there is a time-inconsistency problem, I experience this with chocolate on a daily basis, but if I was sufficiently concerned about this ex-ante I would set up a costly commitment mechanism.

Now, we know that any welfare loss through time inconsistency must be below the cost of setting up the commitment mechanism. As there is a significant gap in time between the purchase and consumption of said food I think there is a pretty low cost mechanism right there – just don’t buy the frikken stuff. Furthermore, junk foods come in a range of sizes, if you want to prevent yourself eating too much you can buy a smaller one.

As a result, I don’t see the time-inconsistency problem as being that significant here – so I agree with Brad on this.

I see Rauparaha also raised other moral frameworks – now of course this is true, as I made a conclusion I made implicit value judgments.

However, I personally believe that any moral framework that isn’t reducible to utilitarianism is suspect, so although it is fine to disagree with me there is no ground for change here 😀

@Robbie

I can believe that peoples expectations or beliefs might have errors, and that there could be scope to help under these grounds. But I am not willing to say that people would make ex-ante suboptimal decisions given there expectation and belief structures.

And if it is shown that smokers are a true net benefit to society then I have no problem with subsidising smoking. But I would need to be shown this was the case first.

Surely it isn’t that hard to believe that people make suboptimal decisions sometimes? Dan Ariley has done work that suggest people make choices / hold views when aroused that they view as suboptimal when they’re not aroused. Note that just because we think people sometimes make suboptimal decisions isn’t sufficient as an argument for government intervention.

I agree though that in this case, discount chocolate seems a long bow to draw, along the lines of “milk shouldn’t cost more than coke” nonsense.