Monthly Archives: March 2017

Remembering the sacrifice

Many times and in many places I have seen a call to remember the sacrifice of the soldiers who died in some past conflict. Often, this call seems an attempt to direct attention away from the misguidedness of the particular conflict or the incompetence and selfish motives of the leadership who decided to enter the war. It tries to make people focus on the noble courage of the soldiers, not the sordid power-hunger of the rulers. The bravery of soldiers is discussed in another post (http://sanderheinsalu.com/ajaveeb/?p=595); here I would like to clarify this sacrifice business.

If the soldiers volunteered under reasonably accurate information about the reasons for the conflict and the chances of success, then indeed they chose to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Then we should remember their sacrifice. If, however, they were conscripted (dictatorships often call this volunteering) using the threat of punishment for them or their family, then they did not make the sacrifice any more than a sacrificial animal sacrifices itself. Others sacrificed the conscripts to further their own ends.

These ends are unlikely to prioritize defeating an evil regime and making the world a better place, although the propaganda claims this was the objective. Mostly the goal of leaders is to preserve and expand their power, whether by defending the country against takeover or conquering additional subjects and wealth. Even if this is acknowledged, current propaganda may point out some good side effect of sacrificing the soldiers, e.g. defeating an old enemy. This is again a distraction attempt. The world is complex and interconnected, so every event, including a mass death, has some beneficial side effects, just like every event has some negative side effects. One should consider the overall consequences of an event, not just one side effect.

If the soldiers genuinely volunteered, but due to being misled by propaganda, then they wanted to sacrifice themselves for one cause, but their leaders sacrificed them for another. Usually volunteers underestimate the length of the war and the probability of dying. Thus even when they know the true goal of the conflict, the sacrifice they are led to is larger than the one they intended to make.

The most clear and direct self-sacrifice is made by suicide bombers. They probably think that their bombing serves a good purpose, but such belief is almost always misguided. Religious indoctrination of the bombers manipulates them into believing in a noble cause, hiding the true goals of the leaders ordering the bombing.

I have not heard many calls to remember the sacrifice of present-day child soldiers. Rather there are calls to pity and save them. The situation of many soldiers in many wars has been similar to children forced to fight – ignorance and fear of punishment. Obeying the conscription order often offers a greater survival probability than refusal.

Instead of remembering the sacrifice of conscripts, we should remember them being sacrificed. Remember with pity. Remember to prevent.

Would a protest influence you?

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Help, a politician I don’t like is in power! I should do something about it. But what? I know! I will join a protest – this is something. Now I can feel good about myself for having done something. And post on social media how I opposed evil so effectively. I am a socially conscious, altrustic person.

On a more serious note, one way to evaluate whether a given protest could change the situation is to put yourself in the position of the target audience. If your favourite politician was in power, would this protest change your support for said politician? If you were the politician in power, would you change your policy when many opponents use this protest against it?

Even if the answer is no, a protest may still have some effect, because it may change the preferences of the swing voters. The „no” may come from deeply ideological people, whereas more open-minded folks may conform to the herd. If they see many people opposed to something, they may start to oppose it too.

On the other hand, a protest may have the opposite effect to the one intended. It may harden ideological positions and increase polarisation. If the majority is weakly in favour of a policy, then protests against it may strengthen the support of the majority for it, leading to greater turnout and more yes-votes.

From an economic viewpoint, marching on the street with signs, chanting slogans or commenting on social media has no direct impact on politicians or most voters. The exception is those who are stuck in a traffic jam when a protest closes a street. Rational agents should not pay attention to protests which do not affect them (such activism is „cheap talk” in economic jargon, or at best „money burning”).

Real people may be swayed by the opinion of a large crowd. However, a form of protest that has an objective impact on people’s lives is likely to influence people more, because it affects them via both the opinion of the crowd and the direct impact. Both the belief shift and the hardening of the opposition are probably greater.

There are many illegal means of directly affecting the population, but also some legal forms of protest with objective impact. Economic protest is boycotting certain countries, firms or goods, refusing to work for the regime, and moving elsewhere („voting with one’s feet”), and is usually legal. The objective impact is that if enough intelligent and hardworking people shift their spending and taxpaying elsewhere, then the regime will be in fiscal trouble. If this does not change the policy of the leadership, then at least the lack of money will make the program harder to carry out.

There is a larger personal cost for economic protest than for cheap talk. One has to give up certain goods, or pay more, or experience the hassle of moving residence. This is why most people who threaten to boycott a firm or leave a country do not end up doing so. The threats are just another form of cheap talk, which can be posted on social media to impress other cheap talkers.

Incentivising refereeing

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To shorten the refereeing lag and improve report quality in economics, the natural solution is to incentivise academics to do a better and quicker job. Economists respond to incentives, but currently no salary or promotion consequences arise from good or bad refereeing, as far as I know. In http://sanderheinsalu.com/ajaveeb/?p=503, I wrote about incentives for authors not to submit careless papers (in the hope that a refereeing mistake gets them accepted). One such incentive is requiring refereeing for a journal as a precondition for submitting to that journal. If a submitted paper gets n referee reports on average, then before submitting, an author should referee n papers in a timely manner, which should balance the supply and demand of refereeing. This forced refereeing may lead to quick, but sloppy reports.

An additional incentive is needed for quality. Rahman’s 2010 paper on the question „who watches the watchmen” suggests an answer. The editor can insert a deliberate mistake in every paper and see whether a referee finds it. If not, then the refereeing of that person is likely of low quality. The mistake is corrected before publication. Alternatively, the editor can ask each author to insert a mistake and tell the editor about it. The author is not penalised for this mistake and is asked to correct it if the paper is accepted. The referees are again judged on whether they find the mistake.

The above scheme derives refereeing incentives from publication incentives, requiring minimal change to the current system. However, it is somewhat indirect. A more straightforward incentive for refereeing is to reward it directly, either paying for it or basing promotion decisions partly on it. The speed of refereeing is already slightly monetarily incentivised in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. If the referee sends the report before a deadline, then she or he is paid 100 dollars. If a good referee report takes about 10 hours, then the amount is certainly not enough to motivate quality provision, but it is a step in one of the right directions. A simple improvement on the binary „before vs after deadline” reward scheme is to reduce the payment gradually as the delay of the referee report increases.

If refereeing is incentivised, then lower-ranked journals need larger incentives to compensate for the fact that refereeing for these has less inherent prestige and the paper one has to read is of lower quality. On the other hand, lower-ranked journals are less able to motivate refereeing with the threat of not accepting submissions from those who have not refereed. There are more lower-ranked journals, and it is less important to get accepted by any particular one of them. Some of the less prestigious journals would find no referees under the system proposed above. This is good, because it removes the „peer reviewed” status of some junk journals and may force them to close. If authors know that quality journals require refereeing before submission, then they draw the obvious conclusion about a journal that does not require it.