A related issue is the problem identified by Milton Friedman (among others). He puts all spending into one cell on a 2 X 2 matrix, where the columns are "who pays for it" (me or someone else) and "who gets the benefit" (again, me or someone else). In the cell where "I pay for it, and I get the benefit" I have an incentive to care about both the cost of the good/service (as I am paying) and the quality (as I am consuming it). If I am paying for someone else, I care about the cost, but am less fussed about the quality. If someone else is paying for me, then I don't care about the cost, but I do want high, or at least acceptable, quality. If someone else is paying for someone else's goods or services, I potentially have little/no economic incentive to care at all (I may care for other reasons). If only 50% of the Australian population are net tax payers, there is a lot of Govt spending that falls into this last category. Some of Steven's suggestions address these concerns.
How would systems based on impartiality differ from these based on reciprocity?
I've added a comment to this article on Online Opinion, laying out some ideas that I believe no-one else seems to have yet considered.
A related issue is the problem identified by Milton Friedman (among others). He puts all spending into one cell on a 2 X 2 matrix, where the columns are "who pays for it" (me or someone else) and "who gets the benefit" (again, me or someone else). In the cell where "I pay for it, and I get the benefit" I have an incentive to care about both the cost of the good/service (as I am paying) and the quality (as I am consuming it). If I am paying for someone else, I care about the cost, but am less fussed about the quality. If someone else is paying for me, then I don't care about the cost, but I do want high, or at least acceptable, quality. If someone else is paying for someone else's goods or services, I potentially have little/no economic incentive to care at all (I may care for other reasons). If only 50% of the Australian population are net tax payers, there is a lot of Govt spending that falls into this last category. Some of Steven's suggestions address these concerns.