The tyranny puzzle in social preferences: an empirical investigation

Abstract

When forming their preferences about the distribution of income, rational people may be caught between two opposite forms of "tyranny." Giving absolute priority to the worst-off imposes a sort of tyranny on the rest of the population, but giving less than absolute priority imposes a reverse form of tyranny where the worst-off may be sacrificed for the sake of small benefits to many well-off individuals. We formally show that this intriguing dilemma is more severe than previously recognised, and we examine how people negotiate such conflicts with a questionnaire-experimental study. Our study shows that both tyrannies are rejected by a majority of the participants, which makes it problematic for them to define consistent distributive preferences on the distribution. JEL: H20, H21

One, Two, Many—Insensitivity to Group Size in Games with Concentrated Benefits and Dispersed Costs

“…and Tundgodden 2010, Voorhoeve 2014, Cowell et al 2015. Specifically, it attempts to answer the following question: Should the number n matter, if the welfare of one poor individual is traded-off against the welfare of n rich individuals?…”

Balancing small against large burdens

“…The final study I shall review concerns income rather than health 6 . The authors asked subjects (British and Norwegian students, n = 642) the following question (Cowell et al , 2015, p. 771): “Suppose one poor person benefits from an income increase of £ G while all the rich, no matter how many there are, suffer an income reduction of £1. If G were large enough, would this be a good idea?”…”

“…Consequently, the responses might provide an overestimate of support for the idea that no number of small but appreciable benefits to the better off can outweigh one very large benefit to a badly off person. Second, the survey questions in Cowell et al (2015) suggest the imposition of a loss on some for the sake of a gain to others. Some subjects may therefore have conceived of this as a question about forcible transfers from some for the sake of another.…”

Vaulting Intuition: Temkin's Critique of Transitivity

“…Moreover, while Temkin is right that many philosophers share his judgements in this Spectrum Case, 2 he offers no evidence for his claim that these judgements are part of common-sense morality. Indeed, the only relevant study I know of finds that a minority of respondents endorsed both the limited form of aggregation and the limited form of nonaggregation that together imply these judgements (Cowell et al 2010).…”

“…Indeed, the only relevant study I know of finds that a minority of respondents endorsed both the limited form of aggregation and the limited form of non-aggregation that together imply these judgements (Cowell et al . 2010).…”