@akkartik @billseitz Good point! My thinking was definitely eurocentric. The short answer is I don't know. When the Indian state overtly distributes on-balance-sheet state resources, do you think its distributions are narrower than private-sector outcomes? 1/

@akkartik @billseitz I suspect not overtly, but I think I make an assumption that may not hold in India, that programs enacted by the central state are more or less executed as intended, no doubt with some degree of leakage due to corruption by those performing the execution or in more local governments to which programs are delegated, but that such leakage would be modest. 2/

@akkartik @billseitz I think (but could be wrong, would be grateful to be corrected) that the argument largely holds at the level of central government enactment, but that corruption at levels of execution or delegation might undo it in India's case. 3/

@akkartik @billseitz I worry that my knowledge here is so casual it may only be stereotype, though. Do let me know if that's the case. I do know that the Indian central state has had some extraordinary successes too (my fintech friends have raved about the Unified Payments Interface). /fin

@billseitz @akkartik just for the record, i don’t support debt-financed purchase of equities into a SWF by the state. it was Cowen’s thought experiment, and in an earlier draft i had an caveat explanation paragraph, but i thought it diluted the main idea of the piece. i would support equity or investment more broadly purchases by a progressive-tax financed SWF. but not by debt or money issuance, except under very particular circumstances.

@billseitz @akkartik (i've added back my caveat paragraphs as an appendix-style update to the post, fwiw. thanks both of you for all the feedback!)

@billseitz @akkartik a couple of things: i think even quite imperfectly democratic states are structurally more progressive when they have resources to distribute than private sector market institutions, but not because private sector market institutions are “more corrupt”. 1/

@billseitz @akkartik on the contrary, rich-get-richer outcomes are market institutions working as advertised. each participant is fully invited to pursue her self-interest, and more resources brings more capacity to pursue ones self-interest effectively. 2/

@billseitz @akkartik state-mediated distributional institutions are always “corrupt”, to some greater or lesser degree, but they can only be that way because they have a “fair”, often egalitarian, benchmark they can fail to live up to. even failing to live up, they yield far more egalitarian outcomes than market institutions, *when the state is openly, directly doing the distributing*. 3/

@billseitz @akkartik contemporary imperfect democratic states do certainly also undergird very regressive transfers, but those are almost always when it does not have an transparent distributive role. tax breaks rather than open benefits, regulatory loopholes that are obscure, that only beneficiaries really track and understand. (this is the form “capture” usually takes.) 4/

@billseitz @akkartik to a first approximation, among all the countries that count as liberal democracies, the on-balance-sheet fiscal footprint of the state (relative to some measure of size, usually GDP) is a measure of how social democratic the state is. 5/

@billseitz @akkartik that is not independent of corruption of course. there’s a straightforward reason to expect “less corrupt” (it’s always hard to measure) states would have larger fiscal footprints under (even imperfect) democratic institutions. so we see a cluster of less-corrupt, bigger footprint democratic states like the scandinavians. 6/

@billseitz @akkartik we also see a french state with a big fiscal footprint and much less universal benefits distribution, which i think reflects peculiarities of french democracy, and the way certain favored cohorts have unusual leverage for historical and institutional reasons. is that “corruption”? “capture”? 7/

@billseitz @akkartik maybe. the distributions are overtly made to mass constituencies according to law, but the outcomes may seem unfair, eg unusually generous pensions for some, favored job categories. even there, it’s loss less narrow than the same resources would have been distributed if by private market institutions. 8/

@billseitz @akkartik another objection one might raise would be be defense and intelligence expenditures, which are large, overtly allocated, but distributed with extraordinary corruption. but i think this is the exception that proves the rule: the exception occurs in the sector explicitly shielded from even ordinary, flawed procedures for public accountability. 9/

@billseitz @akkartik overall, i think overt state distribution of benefits, in the context of even very imperfect liberal democracies, is a pretty good measure of social democraticness, and a pretty good direction to strive towards. though not blindly, obviously for the relationship to continue to hold, expansions of fiscal footprint must be matched with commensurate institutions of public accountability. 10/

@billseitz @akkartik this usually comes “naturally” in democratic-ish states when resources are openly distributed at scale, but beneath this “natural” is always activists demanding and insisting, and politicians fearful of embarrassment. it’s easy to conceive of failures of, workarounds to, attacks on this “nature”. 11/

@billseitz @akkartik we really can fuck things up. fetishizing and gamifying and measure, including e.g. fiscal expenditure per GDP, is an invitation for Goodhart’s Law to bite. 12/

@billseitz @akkartik nevertheless it’s a good direction, if pursued with care and attention.

for more (really?) see https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5675.html

/fin