Abstract
I am interested in how models, practices, and concepts travel across specialties and thereby change and are changed in turn. In the present essay I discuss Gordon Tullock’s ideas about the relationship between biology and economics in the light of his correspondence with the biologist Garrett Hardin. Tullock contributed to one of Hardin’s edited projects, but they took different approaches to related problems, which I characterize as problems of coordinated action. Tullock saw that he and Hardin were up to a similar line of inquiry, and Hardin engaged with him up to a point, but ultimately the biologist differed with the economist regarding the potential for the reliability of a regulating power such as the state.
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Notes
It is also noteworthy that some of the most serious criticisms of the systems way of doing things originated in the research programs of the systems approach’s strongholds. Kenneth Arrow’s so-called impossibility theorem suggested that many systems may not have a single stable optimum. According to Steven Medema, game theory, developed at RAND, “made possible many of the theoretical constructs at the heart of public choice analysis” (Medema 2000).
“The ideology component is particularly interesting given attempts by the Virginia school to both embrace and distance themselves from it– examples of which we have seen earlier in this essay. But the claim by Buchanan that the methodology leads to conclusions consistent with the ideology cannot be sustained. There is no one-way street here; as evidenced by, for example, the differences between Virginia and Chicago public choice, it takes only a bit of tinkering with the assumptions to generate results at odds with the Virginia ideological position” (Medema 2000, p. 318).
“Any conception of State activity that divides the social group into the ruling class and the oppressed class, and that regards the political process as simply a means through which this class dominance is established and then preserved, must be rejected as irrelevant for the discussion which follows, quite independently of the question as to whether or not such conceptions may or may not have been useful for other purposes at other times and places” (Buchanan and Tullock 1962, pp. 19–20).
“What kinds of individuals inhabit our model society? As we emphasized in the preceding chapter, the separate individuals are assumed to have separate goals both in their private and in their social action. These goals may or may not be narrowly hedonistic. To what extent must the individuals be equal? The simplest model would be one which postulates that most of the individuals are, in fact, essentially equivalent in all external characteristics. A nation of small freeholders, perhaps roughly similar to the United States of 1787, would fit the model well. Such a requirement, however, would be overly restrictive for our purposes. We need make no specific assumptions concerning the extent of equality or inequality in the external characteristics of individuals in the social group. We specify only that individuals are members of a social group in which collective action is guided by a set of rules, or one in which no such rules exist. In the latter case, unlikely as it may be in the real world, the rational choice of a set of rules would seem to take on high priority. Since this case is also simpler theoretically, a large part of our discussion will be devoted to it. The more normal situation in which there exists a set of collective decision rules, but in which the question of possible improvements in these rules remains an open one, will be discussed less frequently in any specific sense. Fortunately, however, the process involved in choosing an ‘optimal’ set of decision rules, starting de novo, can be extended without difficulty to the discussion of improvements in existing rules” (Buchanan and Tullock 1962, p. 14).
“In discussing an original constitution or improvements in an existing constitution, we shall adopt conceptual unanimity as a criterion. That is to say, we are concerned with examining proposals that will benefit each member of the social group. There are two reasons for adopting this criterion. First, only by this procedure can we avoid making interpersonal comparisons among separate individuals. Secondly, in discussing decision rules, we get into the familiar infinite regress if we adopt particular rules for adopting rules. To avoid this, we turn to the unanimity rule, since it is clear that if all members of a social group desire something done that is within their power, action will be taken regardless of the decision rule in operation. It seems futile to discuss a ‘theory’ of constitutions for free societies on any other assumptions than these. Unless the parties agree to participate in this way in the ultimate constitutional debate and to search for the required compromises needed to attain general agreement, no real constitution can be made. An imposed constitution that embodies the coerced agreement of some members of the social group is a wholly different institution from that which we propose to examine in this book” (Buchanan and Tullock 1962, p. 14–15).
“The ultimate defense of the economic-individualist behavioral assumption must be empirical. If, through the employment of this assumption, we are able to develop hypotheses about collective choice which will aid in the explanation and subsequent understanding of observable institutions, nothing more need be thrown into the balance. However, implicit in the extension of the behavioral assumption used in economic theory to an analysis of politics is the acceptance of a methodology that is not frequently encountered in political science. Through the use of the utility-maximizing assumption, we shall construct logical models of the various choice-making processes. Such models are themselves artifacts; they are invented for the explicit purpose of explaining facts of the real world. However, prior to some conceptual testing, there is no presumption that any given model is superior to any other that might be chosen from among the infinitely large set of models within the possibility of human imagination. The only final test of a model lies in its ability to assist in understanding real phenomena” (Buchanan and Tullock 1962, p. 28).
For example, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (Smith 1977).
“Competitive Exclusion” Gordon Tullock, Werner G. Heim, and Garrett Hardin. Science, New Series, 132(34119): July 8, 1960, pp. 95–96.
“Indeed I do remember our exchange of comments in Science some years back. I am delighted to hear from you again, and I certainly would like to take advantage of your kindness in offering to send me a bibliography on ‘The Economics of Externality.’ I am ignorant of this field, but do not want to continue to remain ignorant. It is very kind to offer help...The suggestions you made in you second paragraph are most interesting and require further thought. Thought I am repelled by some of your suggestions, as a matter of principle I think we should try to work out the consequences of all semi-reasonable suggestions in considerable detail, and evaluate them only after having done so. You have suggested some new lines of thought for me.”—31 December 1968. Garrett Hardin to Gordon Tullock. Garrett Hardin Papers. University of California, Santa Barbara Special Collections (henceforth Hardin Papers).
“One can also think of a corporation as an aggregate of individuals competing with other aggregates engaged in the same line of business. We assume no interbreeding of the aggregates (‘mergers’). The equivalent of biological reproduction may be taken to be the hiring of new personnel. The limit of possible income is the limit of consumer demand for the goods or services of the kind offered. If there is free competition and no ecological differentiation, the most efficient aggregates will necessarily displace all others.”—“Competitive Exclusion” Gordon Tullock, Werner G. Heim, and Garrett Hardin. Science, New Series, 132(34119): July 8, 1960, pp. 95–96.
Ibid.
For example, the history of Hayek’s relationship with Pinochet’s Chile, and of the criticism and apologia aimed his way afterwards, is covered in Caldwell and Montes (2015).
Officially the Swedish Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Ostrom shared the prize with Oliver WIlliamson for their separate analyses of economic governance.
http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/editorials/boulding.php. Accessed December 2015.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Elihu Gerson, Michael Ghiselin, James Griesemer, Janet Landa, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Research for this article was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SES 1431514.
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Oakes, J. Rent-seeking and the tragedy of the commons: two approaches to problems of collective action in biology and economics. J Bioecon 18, 137–151 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-016-9224-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-016-9224-9