Because it would be irrational. There are many useful ways of demonstrating this analytically. It is a huge subfield in political economy. The underprovision of voluntary public goods can be modeled in many different ways. No matter how you slice it, it is always irrational for individuals to contribute to public goods voluntarily even if they would all benefit from the provision. If you don’t mind some math, useful articles on this topic are:
David P. Baron. “A Dynamic Theory of Collective Goods Programs.” American Political Science Review, vol. 90 no.2
Thomas Palfrey and Howard Rosenthal. “Participation and the Provision of Discrete Public Goods: A Strategic Analysis.” Journal of Public Economy 24, p. 171-193.
Allan Drazen models the underprovision of public goods very cleverly as a war of attrition in his new text on politics and macroeconomics, though the damn title eludes me. There is also a bare-bones, super-easy model in Positive Political Theory by David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks. I think it’s at the end of chapter 4.
If anyone is actually interested, I could walk him/her through some of this analysis. It is very powerful.
Maeglin: *If anyone is actually interested, I could walk him/her through some of this analysis. *
Speaking for myself, yes please. One of the chief issues of this thread seems to be whether and why markets sometimes can’t provide attainable goods that societies genuinely want. I think it would be very helpful to get a competent explanation of how this seemingly illogical phenomenon actually works, and I sure as heck can’t provide one!
I said there were ineveitable tendencies to market restrictions. That is not the same as saying there are inevitable tendencies toward market failures. A market failure implies a market free to make a decision and making a bad one/‘wrong’ one. A market restriction implies a market not able to make any choice at all, and so we never know how it would have acted.
Well I would say that to assume that companies that pollute do so knowingly is quite a stretch. I also think that to reduce it down to externalizing costs is rather simplistic; if a company paid all the healthcosts of people affected, would that mean it wasnt polluting, or that it was Ok?
Insurance companies dont provide coverage that people can afford because the cost of healthcare is so high. This is what I dont nderstand about the calls for national healthcare; how is that going to reduce the cost? Its only going to disperse the same high cost that exists now; indeed, it will increase the cost. Youre going after the distributer, while not examining why the producers costs are so high.
Its like if wheat were a million dollars a bushel, and the cost of bread in grocery stores was astronomical; do you go after the grocery stores, madate that they can only charge x amount for bread or dictate that they have to provide a certain amount for all, or do you look at and try to fix the reasons why its so expensive in the first place?
Say again for example that 25-30% of the population doesnt have health insurance. Say we institute national healthcare insurance. 70-75% of the population is going to be paying what they were before, plus the cost of the insurance for the other 25-30%. ~How is that going to be cheaper~?
The cost of the insurance itself is still going to have to be the same, because the cost of healthcare itself is still going to be high. Everyone in the US can have insurance tomorrow, but the price of open heart surgery, cat scans, etc etc is going to be the same.
It does absolutely no good to be railing at the distributers (the insurance companies), when they are not the ones determining the prices of the supply. They merely reflect it.
Not really. The whole pollution things is apples to oranges anyway. If you you can your neighbor for spraying his backyard with DDT, you can sue a compny as well. If anything, polluton regulation is just forcing comanies to adhere to the same legal stadard as individuals. Just as being mugged is a restriction of the free market, so is being ripped off by a store. Just as your neighbor spraying his yard with DDT is a restriction of the free market, so is a company polluting.
How is the fact of companies not supplying people with cheap healthcare a restriction of the free market? Do we all have cheap healthcare by nature, and companies took it away from us against our will/without our knowledge?
And sometimes its far simpler and more effective for one part of society that is convinced of its rightness to enact a law to get what it wants, than to laboriously set up a consensus at the level of individual people.
Vdc: *I said there were ineveitable tendencies to market restrictions. That is not the same as saying there are inevitable tendencies toward market failures. A market failure implies a market free to make a decision and making a bad one/‘wrong’ one. *
No, “market failure” is a technical term meaning “A situation, usually discussed in a model not in the real world, in which the behavior of optimizing agents in a market would not produce a Pareto optimal allocation.”
Just as your neighbor spraying his yard with DDT is a restriction of the free market, so is a company polluting.
I’m not an economics expert, but I don’t think your attempted distinction between “market restriction” and “market failure” is in line with standard economics usage. I do know that pollution is commonly cited as a textbook case of market failure.
I also think that to reduce it down to externalizing costs is rather simplistic;*
Take it up with the economists; they’re the ones who cite externalized costs as the classic rationale for polluting the environment.
if a company paid all the healthcosts of people affected, would that mean it wasnt polluting, or that it was Ok?
No, if a company paid all the costs of the effects of its polluting, it would mean it was no longer externalizing the costs, and so it would no longer be advantageous for it to pollute. Duh, if you’ll pardon the expression.
*Insurance companies dont provide coverage that people can afford because the cost of healthcare is so high. *
Right. And part of what’s driving up that cost is market failures, as I mentioned. (Not to mention the high overheads and profit levels associated with multiple incompatible insurance systems.)
What I think you’re trying to claim is that the current market price of healthcare is optimal, and so there’d be no way to provide healthcare for the currently uninsured without paying around 25%–33% more for it. But there’s no reason to assume that the current cost and availability of healthcare are actually optimal. As Maeglin noted, markets do have a tendency to underprovide common goods, and I’m sure s/he’ll be along on a white horse any minute now to explain exactly how.
Kimstu is technically correct with respect to her usage of “market failures.” Voodoochile’s is imprecise and not terribly useful. With that in mind, a few words before I bore you with models.
Externalization is a fundamental issue. It is also hardly simplistic. I just read a good article on the externalization of smoke inhalation costs:
V.V. Chari and Charles Jones. “A Reconsideration of the Problem of Social Cost: Free Riders and Monopolists.” Econ. Theory 16, No. 1.
If you manage to slog through this article, you will see that externalities are no simple matter.
You labor under the classical assumption that all firms are price-takers. In monopolistic or ologopolistic markets, such as, you guessed it, health care, this is simply untrue. These firms have sufficient market power to exert great influence over the price of goods and services. For example, I ended up in the emergency room a few months ago. I just received a statement from my insurance company indicating how much of my bill was paid. The hospital essentially sent my insurance company a bill, and the insurance company paid only a proportion of it. The hospital was simply forced to write off the rest.
Anything for you, Kimstu. There are lots of reasons why public goods are underprovided in competitive markets. I will pick one model as an example and try to give you some of its intuition.
It is, of course, just a model. It is by definition context-free and may require assumptions that are often dubious in the “real world.” Its purpose is not to be a gospel nor an object of faith nor a grand macro-reason for the existence of some phenomenon. Its purpose is to illuminate the decision-making processes of individuals in a market context. There are lots of possible models, some better, some worse, and all of them are to be used rather than believed.
The intuition and formalization of this one is from the Palfrey and Rosenthal article I cited above. I am not going to go through all of the math, as I just don’t know how to format it here to make it look intelligible, and I doubt it would even be all that helpful.
Here’s the scenario. Imagine a fixed-contribution discrete public good provision. Each individual has preferences over the provision of this public good, all of which are private information. There are no coercive institutions: the good must be provided in an entirely decentralized context. In English, imagine fifty people work in an office. The coffee machine is broken, and it costs $30 to replace. One enterprising office drone decides to take up a collection: he asks each person once whether or not she would like to contribute $1 to the kitty to buy a new coffee pot. Each person can either contribute or pass. Either the good is underprovided, overprovided, or perfectly provided. Palfrey and Rosenthal cover two cases: one case gives all the players refunds if the good is under or over provided, the other case does not. Since we are dealing with a realm of complete decentralization, I will explain the latter case.
The bottom line is that people have incentives to misrepresent their preferences over the provision of public goods. Their incentive is to “shade down” their preferences under the expectation that someone with stronger preferences for the good will be more willing to pay the cost of its provision. Individuals know that other individuals are misrepresenting their preferences and thus make a strategic decision whether or not to provide. This is the “free riding” problem. It is rational to wish to enjoy the benefits of a good without paying its cost.
The solution to this game is to find a strategy for each individual from which they have no unilateral incentive to deviate. A strategy is simply a decision whether or not to contribute $1.
I will spare you the mathematics. The bottom line is that the probability of optimum provision of the public good is very low. The conditions for being willing to contribute become more difficult as the price of the good increases holding the size of the group constant, and at the same time, the probability of contribution by those who randomize between contributing and not contributing declines.
There soon reaches a point where even if one of the randomizers should switch from non-contribution to contribution, the good would not be provided. At this juncture, there is no incentive for a randomizer to deviate since his deviation would not be pivotal, that is, it wouldn’t actually change anything. Knowing this, the probability of everyone else’s contribution declines, since there is an expectation that the public good won’t ever be provided. Even if the payoffs of individuals would be higher if they contribute than if they won’t, they don’t contribute because they want to free ride.
There is a lot of meat to this model. It is very difficult to summarize in a short space and without the usual tools. If you do not find my explanation satisfying or useful, no problem, I will try another model and see if I can do better.
My hero!!! Thanks Maeglin, that hurt my brain but fought my ignorance. So let me see if I understand the application to the healthcare issue correctly: even if the benefits for most individuals under a universal health-insurance program would be greater than they are under the current system (meaning that, assuming rational choices, society would want the universal program)—nonetheless, because of the “free riding” problem, individuals will be deterred from voluntarily contributing to set up such a program. Izzat it, more or less?
And am I right in thinking that this is an example of “market failure”, i.e., a problem that is inherently difficult for markets alone to solve because market forces themselves act to undermine the market solution?
Riiight. And if youll read your own link, youll see the word Monopoly. As in restricted market. As in non-free market.
And I could point out that saying “in which the behavior of optimizing agents in a market would not produce a Pareto optimal allocation” is the same as saying “When a bad or wrong decision is made”. Any decision not ending up in the result (optimal conclusion) that one wanted is a bad/wrong one, whatever the external circumstances (optimizing agents). Its the same thing.
Well apparently, from that link, regulation is no greater success.
But really, all that article says is that ideally, producers (thus their customers) would be paying for the full cost of any pollutants and their effects they cause, rather than the taxpayers. But considering the existance of one or more competitors, pressure to keep costs down is an incentive to off-load (externalize) the costs to the taxpayers.
Noting that even in your own link, the solutions proposed to this are themselves market based; extension of property rights, tax levels based on amounts of pollutants, being able to buy and sell pollutant credits, etc. Where in that link do they advocate market restriction? Where in that link do they assert that the current market restrictions are having the desired result (thats Pareto optimal allocation to you) or recomend further market restrictions?
I would like to point out a very interesting paragraph in that article, though:
…if we, as a society, wish to reduce the damage caused by pollution of this sort, we need to accept that we may have to pay more in order to gain that benefit. For example, if the producer found a way of investing in technology to safely dispose of the pollution then it will cost them more. Some of that cost will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. We might be paying more, but society benefits from reduced pollution!** The last point highlights the problem that often causes market failure - the inability of price to act as an appropriate signal to both consumers and producers.**
First, note that society and the consumer are used pretty much interchangeably. Hes basically saying that if we want to keep companies from offloading the costs to taxpayers, we consumers have to pay higher prices.
Second, it needs to be pointed out that the very last sentence of the paragraph, in bold, makes no sense; the higher price caused by the cost of pollution reduction being added in is an appropriate signal of how highly people value a clean environment. The more people value something, the higher the price is going to be. The market is effectively communicating the value (and cost) of a clean environment in the higher price.
The problem is not with the information contained in the price, the problem is with how we consumers act on it.
And my point is, and always was, tied up with the If clause at the beginning of the paragraph; if we, as a society, wish to reduce the damage caused by pollution of this sort.
So what if we as a society are not? Earlier in the article:
Society would, at this level, value the output produced at the the same value as the cost of producing it. Previously society valued the output of the product concerned less than the true cost of supplying it.
In this sentence, indeed throughout the whole article, the author is recognizing and using as a gauge what Ive been saying all along; that what we as a society want and value is determined by the choices we make as a market.
No, Ill take it up with you, youre the one who said pollution regulation came about because of off-loading of costs. Its not. If the issue were off-loading costs, there would be no laws against pollution per se, but only laws that say a company is responsible for paying for its effects themselves.
If your neighbor sprayed his yard with DDT, does it make it Ok if he pays for your medical bills? If someone hits you in the face, is it only illegal if they cant afford/refuse to pay for your doctor visit? Is assault illegal because it is ‘externalizing aggression’?
Why wouldnt it be advantageous to pollute? What if a company could pollute, pay the cost, and still underprice its competitors? Does that make it Ok to you, as long as they pay for it themselves? You dont mind getting cancer, as long as those responsible pay your medical bills? What if its cheaper to pay peoples medical bills than it is to get rid of the cancer causing agents? What happens when its cheaper to clean up pollution than it is to not pollute in the first place?
No, anti-pollution legislation has nothing to do with off-loading of costs. I repeat, that is simplistic.
Failure to do what, price something low that everyone values highly? Or failure to reflect delusions such as that which we most want should be cheap or free?
Its optimal for the producers yes, but not for the consumers. It is certainly not in a state of equilibrium.
Youre assumption, which I consider ridiculous, is that any optimal pricing can ever be achieved by enacting universal healthcare. Yeah, introduce a purchaser to the equation that has no bottom line to watch, a purchaser that has pretty much unlimited pockets, a purchaser that can match or outbid any private purchaser out there, a purchaser that can never go out of business, and all the suppliers are going to ~lower~ costs?? Why?
I think healthcare is far too expensive. I think the price is inflated. Artificially inflated, as in ‘not due to free-market forces’.
Because we really dont have a free market in healthcare, only a more-free one. And if you really wanted to undercut a few of my arguments, you could point that out. But you cant go there, because your religio-politico beliefs wont allow to go there, even when you put yourself in the ridiculous postition of using Medicare (a non-market based behemoth if there ever was one) as an example while decrying our ‘free market’ healthcare system. If our healthcare system is free market, then how do you explain Medicare? If Medicare is free market, then how can you use it as an example of a non-market based?
Yes, off-loading of costs is fundamental (basic, simple); we all do it, and of course so do all companies when they can. But getting back to the context of my use of the word simplistic, it was in describing cost off-loading as a major reason why there is anti-pollution legislation. It is not the reason for the existance of the legislation, and to think it is is rather simplistic.
Right. And monopolisitic or ologopolistic markets are by definition non-free markets. And your also right, our current system is not a fee market one.
Right, meaning they off-loaded it to the taxpayers. The doctors, nurses, staff and equipment all cost the same, all of the producers still got their price; but rather than the consumer absorbing the price, it was off-loaded to ‘society’, i.e the taxpayers. Pretty simple, er, excuse me, fundamental.
Yes, large firms have great market power to influence prices; depending on their number and their financial insolvency. This after all is part of the market forces contributing to the rise of HMOs.
But part of a purchasers ability to influence lower prices is in the knowledge the seller has as to the purchasers ability to pay. A seller will get the best price from a purchaser that, to the sellers knowledge, the purchaser can afford, in the context of what other purchasers and sellers are out there.
But when the purchaser is the govt, considerations of affordability, future business etc go out the window. The government is not and cannot be an equal player in the market, because it is not hampered by the realities of its competitors or its sellers, namely making a profit, pleasing its customers, etc.
For the government to effectively negotiate lower prices from sellers, it would have to first get rid of all competing buyers or limit the number of sellers. Otherwise, any govt run insurance company would be like a drunk cheerleader in the locker room after a football game.
If its assumptions in the real world are dubious, then so is its usefullness. And if you dont believe something, why would you use it?
So you dont consider the fact of the contribution being fixed as coercive? What if someone wants to pay more? How about the information remaining private? How do you establish a set base framework for the model without being coercive from the outset?
But why did he set a limitation of $1?
Well not really; if it was completely decentralized, why start with the assumption that everyone gets to drink coffee no matter what their contribution? Thats a centralized and somewhat coercive initial decision.
One can see which employees care about drinking coffee by which ones will contribute. Anyone who doesnt contribute obviously doesnt want any coffee.
Right. All this means is that, because we are biological organisms, we will not continue to expend energy in greater amounts than the benefit we from derive from it. In other words, no one does anything for ‘society’ or the ‘social good’, but for their own self interest. And if you can find someone gullible enough to labor on your behalf with minimal energy expended on your part, you will. You could have just used your healthcare company off-loading the cost to taxpayers as an example.
Vdc:Well apparently, from that link, regulation is no greater success.
Huh? Where are you getting the idea that the linked article on externalities and pollution is suggesting that if we didn’t regulate pollution, pollution wouldn’t increase? AFAIK, economists are pretty much unanimous in agreeing that market mechanisms alone are inadequate to deter pollution, so legal restrictions are necessary.
Noting that even in your own link, the solutions proposed to this are themselves market based; extension of property rights, tax levels based on amounts of pollutants, being able to buy and sell pollutant credits, etc.
What the article says is:
Taxation, fines, and permits are all forms of government intervention. (So is redefining the legal scope of the concept of “property rights”.) The fact that the government needs to intervene in order to make the “price signal work more effectively” to achieve the desired social goal of reducing pollution indicates that “market based” solutions alone don’t work. In other words: market failure.
what we as a society want and value is determined by the choices we make as a market.
And by the choices we make through government, such as whether and how much to regulate, tax, and fine polluters.
I don’t see how you can look at the issue of environmental pollution (which is obviously extremely significant to the wellbeing of a lot of people), read a detailed discussion of how markets alone cannot provide adequate incentives to reduce pollution, consider a list of proposed solutions that all require government action, and still say that society’s values are reflected only in its consumer choices. That’s just illogical.
I wsn’t going to join in, but Since Maeglin has so genorously offered his services, I’d like to answer a question. I red through (skimmed really) the article you pointed out earlier, and I read through your summerization. They both raised the same question in my mind. Particularly in regards to this:
I’m not sure “rational” is the corret word here. I think I can understand the argument that short term gains can be made by tricking/using others for profit, but “rational” seems to be a little excessive. Specifically, it seems that the use of this word in the statement of the goal of the model will tend to tilt the experiment towards what many people would consider abuses. That is, if you state that the goal is to make others pay for your use of a common resource, then certainly you are going to find that people are making others pay for the common resource.
Do you have a good article which explains why this choice (to exploit others if youwill allow me to wax hyperbolic) is so universally considered “rational”? It seems that you and the article seem to accept this as an article of faith, or at least a proposition which is self evident.
I’ve been reading these posts and not responding because you guys seem to be doing a pretty good job on your own, and the fine points of economic theory aren’t my strong suit. But there’s an underlying thought that has been brought forth in some of these threads, which has led me to what I think is an interesting question:
What is the purpose of the free market?
It seems to me that some people think that if the market is making profits for anybody, anywhere, it’s doing its job, whether it’s beggaring a lot of people elsewhere.
Is it rational to separate the interests of the United States from those of the world economy in general? It seems to me that free marketers are saying that no nation can do anything … and I mean ANYTHING … that hinders the operation of the free market, they only hurt themselves.
Yet we see China and Japan making their national interest paramount and pegging their currencies to the dollar.
We see many if not most countries erecting trade barriers of various kinds in response to internal pressures.
Why, in the opinion of some free marketers, is the U.S. not free to consider the economic interests of its citizens when making decisions about the free market?
pervert responded to Maeglin: *“It is rational to wish to enjoy the benefits of a good without paying its cost.”
I’m not sure “rational” is the [correct] word here. I think I can understand the argument that short term gains can be made by tricking/using others for profit, but “rational” seems to be a little excessive. *
Maeglin’s going to have to handle most of the responses to his post himself, but on this point I think I can perhaps help out, as follows: As I understand it, Maeglin is using the term “rational” in accordance with the standard economic definition of “economic rationality”. That definition doesn’t take into account purely ethical considerations such as whether you ought not to “trick” or “use” others, except insofar as such behavior will have a negative economic impact.
In other words, if you can freeload on others’ contributions without suffering any practical negative consequences, as in Maeglin’s coffeepot-kitty model, it is economically “rational” to do so. You personally may not like to see unscrupulous freeloading included in the category of “rational behavior”, and I sympathize, but that’s how economists conventionally talk about rationality.
…is the cause of most of our problems. Take (for example) our massive,government-directed investments in the legal industry. The legal industry is vast-over 1 million lawyers, plus countless support staff. Plus, we have all of the courthouses, law libraries, judges, etc. This is a totally non-productive investment-it produces nothing but paper. The courts (as a way to solve disputes) are costly and extremely SLOW_cases take YEARS to be resolved! All of this amounts to a brake upon the economy-we would be much better off to develop alternatives to the current legal system.
If the auto industry were like the legal system, a car wouldcost >1,000,000.00 and take 5years to build! Singapore has a much faster legal system, and their system costs much less…we ought to assess just what our legal system costs-the amount would shock most people.
And for those ofyouwho WANT politicians directing business investments…DON’T FALL for this! A few years ago, a con man from Greece sold a bunch of Massachusetts politicians on a scheme (to re open the bankrupt Quincy shipyard,in Quincy, MA). This group of vulturesincluded Gerry Studds, Ted Kennedy, and several other politicians. The state then backed a $60 million loan o the con man, and the shipyard was to be rebuilt…well, 12 years later, the guy has disappeaered, and the shipyard is still closed(it went bankrupt again). No jobs were created, and the state is ou the $60 million…Ted Kennedy doesn’t like to talk about this…but what the hell, it wasn’t HIS money!
Right. I understood the way the word is being used from the context of the paper Maeglin pointed to. He and the paper used in exactly the same way. Without justification for that particular usage nor a footnote to any such justification. It leads me to believe that it is a common economics term. Which leads me to ask the question how did it become such?
But, I will refrain from hijacking this thread anymore.
ralph: *Government Mis-Directed Investment …is the cause of most of our problems. *
Cite?
I agree with you that waste and fraud in government spending are serious problems, but I’m not going to believe a sweeping assertion that they’re “the cause of most of our problems” without solid quantitative evidence to back it up. A few appalling anecdotes about individual boondoggles, or vague observations such as the fact that the highly authoritarian state of Singapore with a much smaller population than ours has a much less costly legal system, just don’t cut it.
I’m also skeptical about the notion that government waste and fraud are inevitably that much worse than private-sector waste and fraud. I’ve heard the standard theoretical argument about the private sector being more effectively disciplined by market forces, and I think it has some merit, but perhaps not as much as its proponents believe. There’s a hell of a lot of space in real-life markets for individual actors to profit lavishly from waste and fraud before the market manages to correct itself (even when it’s not so hamstrung by market failure that it never does correct itself), and there are plenty of individual actors who exploit those opportunities up to the hilt.
As for the rest of the economics issues touched on recently …well, where’s that Maeglin got to? I’m starting to feel like Mariana at the moated grange here. He cometh not!
What about the Federal Hosing system (HUD) for example? It is the biggest creator of slum housing in the country…and it has cost the US taxpayer TRILLIONS! I can show you public housing projects that have gone from new to slum in 20 years, and cost a fortune!
Then tell me that the fedral government hasn’t squandered money! But it goes deeper…any school district that accepts federal funds frequently finds that the money is spent for all kinds of things except education…and the federal highway program is a pit of corruption.
There isn’t a “purpose”. If you don’t accept freedom as an end in itself, then we’ll never agree on the value of the free market. Now, I do happen to believe that the free market produces the best overall economy, but that’s just a side benefit.
Because (as most economists will tell you) trade restrictions, economic planning, and government meddling in the economy are generally not in the interests of the citizens. A perfect example is the steel tarrif that Bush enacted (and recinded later). I don’t remember the exact numbers but it was commonly cited that for every job it saved in the steel industry, it destroyed 3 or more jobs in other industries.
Another study out shows that outsourcing is actually creating jobs in the United States by boosting efficiency. And yet another says that outsourcing is starting to be rolled back. For instance, Dell just closed its India call center and is moving it back to the U.S.
Well, thanks for citing two more areas where the market has failed utterly. The reason that HUD exists in the first place is that the market has done a VERY poor job of providing low-cost housing for poor people. There are a lot of people working low-paying jobs and living in boxes, or living 12 to a room. I guess you think that’s better than HUD. I personally think it’s full of shit.
In the case of education, most of the private schools that do so much better than public schools are successful because they cherry pick good students from affluent homes. None of these English as a second language kids for them, nossir! The public school educates all children, rich and poor, native and immigrant.
Of course, if you don’t educate poor people, they have little chance of becoming anything BUT poor poeple, and being a constant blight on the economy.
The marketplace has failed miserably in these areas, just as privatizing prisons is proving a miserable failure.
There are lots of reasons why public goods are underprovided in competitive markets. I will pick one model as an example and try to give you some of its intuition.
So let me see if I understand the application to the healthcare issue correctly: even if the benefits for most individuals under a universal health-insurance program would be greater than they are under the current system (meaning that, assuming rational choices, society would want the universal program)—nonetheless, because of the “free riding” problem, individuals will be deterred from voluntarily contributing to set up such a program. Izzat it, more or less?