Sunday, July 25, 2010

Math Problems


Links lead to links, and I end up reading things I have no interest in. That happened just now. As I quit reading, the words struck me: Works by Romer and Rosenthal (1979) and McKelvey (1976) showed that,

when political issues are considered multidimensional rather than single dimensional, an agenda setter could start at any point in the issue space and, by strategically selecting issues, end up at any other point in the issue space, so that there is no unique and stable majority rule outcome.

By strategically selecting issues, one can argue to any outcome.

Yes. It is like solving a math problem: There may be dozens of ways to approach the problem. But there is only one right answer. And if your approach doesn't give the right answer, you used the wrong approach.

Does it matter? It's only the economy. So what if we get the wrong answer. At least we won the election. Right?

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