Brooks on Wisconsin; a beautiful common pool problem Tom Smith

Vintage Miss Brooks.  He thinks Gov. Walker was a wittle too hawrsh in Wisconsin, a wittle too mean to the interest groups whose suction pipes into the ventricles of the body politic he pinched off, but, Brooks kinda sorta thinks it might be for the best.  Vintage Brooks.

It occurred to me this morning that Walker seems to have pulled off in Wisconsin a thing of particular beauty in the following sense.  Probably the most central economic problem of government is that it's a common pool problem, a big multi-player prisoners' dilemma.  We would all be better off if we didn't suck dry the economy's (viz., our) ability to produce revenues.  On the other hand, it's not as if you are going to stop exploiting the fisc for your special interest group just because I stop doing it.  There is therefore no reason for anybody to hold back; if you do, you're the rube.  

The most powerful and most destructive special interest groups at the state level today are the public sector unions.  They have bankrupted California and they were doing it to Wisconsin.  Central to their power is their ability to require their members to pay dues just by the fact that they have a public sector job. Union dues were deducted automatically whether you liked it or not. Walker's reforms put an end to this in Wisconsin.

Now there is a choice in Wisconsin.  So what happened?  Many, I think most, public employees declined to elect to have their dues deducted from their paychecks.  They did not want to contribute to their union.  The union responded -- That's not fair!  These employees are free riding off of our efforts to get them better benefits (not to mention bankroll lavish leader salaries and perks--another story)!  The deeply satisfying part is that the unions are absolutely correct about this.  It's a common pool problem!  

It's hard to come up with a good metaphor for this.  It's as if you had a big common pool, say a pond full of fish, that was going to be exploited until its ecosystem collapsed, as in the usual common pool story.  So a big boat casts off into the pool, intent on exploiting the heck out of it.  But for the boat to work, its crew has to work together.  If everyone on the boat doesn't work together, they won't be able to ruthlessly exploit the common pool!  But then Walker comes along, and somehow or other says, hey, boat captain, you do not have the authority to make your crew work together.  So they don't.  The great common pool exploiting boat is adrift, disabled by its own prisoners' dilemma. It's a beautiful thing.  What can the little taxpayer on the shore do except ROFL himself sick?