James Green-Armytage

Statement of Purpose

 

            In my graduate study, I would like to focus on normative economic and political systems. That is, my primary purpose will be to identify and develop alternative rules and policies that are better than the status quo from a social welfare standpoint.

            I believe that currently prevalent economic and political systems are far from perfect, and I believe that we face a fascinating and crucial challenge in rethinking these systems, rethinking many of the assumptions behind them, identifying critical problems, and implementing creative solutions. My goal is to help make progress towards a system that provides an authentically higher standard of living, and that is ecologically sustainable.

            I am particularly interested in alternative policies that can potentially fulfill the following objectives: augmenting democracy, decreasing waste, decreasing the inequality of wealth, increasing the quality of labor experience, and making production more ecologically sound.

            In graduate school, I would like to study a broad range of economic systems, policies (past, present, and potential), and theoretical perspectives. I would like to work to identify policies that seem promising, and to study the particularly promising ones in depth, progressing from simple ideas to serious and viable public proposals.

            In this statement of purpose, I will list a few alternative policies that I currently find promising, and that I would like to study in graduate school. I will also state some of the economic questions that I find continually fascinating.

 

•           I’m very interested in the development and application of more sophisticated voting rules. I’m particularly interested in pairwise comparison systems, single transferable vote systems, and delegable proxy systems. The first two of these three are superior systems of majority rule and proportional representation. The third is a system where each voter has the option of casting a vote according to his or her own opinion, or deferring the vote to a proxy of his or her choosing, who then has the option of casting the vote or delegating it to someone else in turn. I suggest that delegable proxy systems are an extremely useful compromise between ‘pure’ direct democracy systems and representative systems, and I hope that they can help shape governments and other organizations into authentic and workable participatory democracies.

 

•           I’m interested in reducing oligopoly in the media industry and shifting some of its components from the private sphere to the public sphere. I’d like to explore alternative remuneration systems for producers of information and entertainment.

 

•           Since I was 15 years old, I have been fascinated by the question of how we can judge whether a given product or service is ‘worthwhile’ (in terms of its social benefits outweighing the social cost of production), and whether we can devise a simple and flexible system that would tend to curtail production not meeting this standard. (Conversely, I’m interested in systems that more consistently encourage ‘worthwhile’ production.) I suspect that natural resources and labor are often undervalued (in that their monetary cost does not fully reflect their social cost), and I would like to find ways to valuate them more appropriately.

            I also suspect that leisure time is often undervalued in the process of public choice. I have wondered since childhood whether our society is taking full advantage of labor-saving technology, or whether there are systematic pressures that artificially push people to work beyond producing what is socially worthwhile. If the latter is true, how can these pressures be eliminated? When the supply of labor greatly exceeds the demand, there seems to be a political pressure to “create jobs,” which always struck me as a wrongheaded approach. Instead of stretching to create tasks with uncertain productive value, I would rather develop ways for everyone to work a little bit less, so that the supply of labor decreases to the appropriate level.   

 

•           Do current systems of private ownership and market exchange tend toward increasing equality, or increasing inequality? If it is the latter, I would like to know more precisely why this occurs, and how the tendency can be reversed. I’m interested in economic redistribution as a means to prevent poverty, as a means to prevent power from becoming overly concentrated in the hands of a few, as a means to redirect consumption toward basic needs rather than luxury items, and as a means to bring the monetary cost of labor closer to reflecting its social cost.

 

•           I would like to work on alternative taxation systems in which a highly progressive wealth tax is central (replacing the income tax, property tax, sales tax, etc.); systems that achieve intensive redistribution of wealth without decreasing national savings or severely undermining the incentive to work.

 

•           I’m interested in an advertising tax, and in creating a government-funded consumer information network, so that advertising expenditure (which often has questionable social value) decreases, and consumer feedback has a greater impact on the reputation of a product or service.

 

•           I’m deeply concerned with the notion that many people find their jobs to be fundamentally unpleasant. Since most people spend a very significant portion of their lives at work, I find it absolutely crucial from a social welfare standpoint that their work experience is pleasant and fulfilling.

            I’m interested in methods of giving workers more bargaining power and more control over their work environment, and in the creation of much more effective government employment services, with databases that include a very significant portion of the unfilled jobs and unemployed workers in the economy. In some cases, it might be possible to use ‘stable marriage’ algorithms to match potential employees and employers. I’d also like to expand government job training programs, and to increase workers’ ability to have flexible hours.

 

•           I think that it’s crucial to preserve the health of the Earth’s ecosystem, and I would like to work toward economic models that fit more naturally with this goal. I would like to increase investment in natural capital, increase ecological protection, and increase the valuation of natural resources. I would like to search for simple, flexible ways to internalize externalities, internalize long-term costs and benefits, encourage durable production, and discourage waste.

 

            After graduate school, I would like to continue doing research along the same lines. I would be happy to teach at the graduate or undergraduate level. I also hope to become active in the political sphere, perhaps advising non-profit organizations, politicians, and political candidates. In short, I would like to continue studying normative systems, and working towards their implementation.