Yeah, “freedom of speech,” “you can vote with your pocketbook,” yadda, yadda, yadda, but unless you are in an area that is nearly 100% for one party that seems like bad business. Even then you are pushing the remaining people to vote with *their *pocketbooks. Like I said, bad business. Worse business when you are in a town that is strongly for one party and you put up extra-large signs for the other. And this is suburban Chicago, so it’s not like there are no other, say, insurance agencies within a block or two.
So, other than buying one the right to blame the other party for causing a dip in sales this quarter, why would somebody do anything that boneheaded?
FTR, the companies I worked for have all frowned on electioneering on the premises, in some cases discouraging political bumper stickers. Just good business, especially when the owner was a Republican fundraiser and one of our bigger customers was a big fundraiser for Obama.
Drove past this morning and his insurance office is for rent. Did he take his guns and move to Norway or retire to Kansas to be with Real Americans? I dunno, but I know it’s Obama’s fault.
I’ve always thought this was incredibly stupid, too. One (plant) nursery we used to go to started putting political crap on their signs that we disagreeded with. Turns out there is another nursery right down the road.
We had a local guy ask us about 4 times to put his sign in our deli window. We told him no. The last time was just a day or two before the election and the lady, perhaps his wife, got very pissy with me when I told her no politics.
I was very glad that he lost after she was so rude.
They do it to show their support for their candidate, and possibly in hope of convincing other people to vote for him, if only in the form of somebody thinking “I don’t really have an opinion here, but Mac at Mac’s Sandwiches likes this one guy, and Mac makes a heck of a sandwich, so I’ll go with this guy.”
This may cost them some customers, and they’re okay with that.
Despite what economists think, not all decisions are based on economics.
Some business owners are going to feel a strong enough attachment to their political beliefs that they’re going to put those ahead of the possible loss of some business.
I’m not really sold on the whole concept of utils. It seems to me to be the equivalent of aether or epicycles - they’re attempts to save a theory that isn’t supported by real world evidence by adding a hypothetical x-factor that cancels out the contradictory evidence.
And of course, there will also be some customers who will specifically seek out a business that espouses political views that they agree with. Consider the situation with Chick-fil-a earlier this year: Yes, some liberals boycotted them, but some conservatives anti-boycotted them. It’s not always clear which way this will end up on net, but it would at least mitigate the cost of expressing your political views.
Further, a business owner might come to the conclusion that a particular candidate or issue might be good for their business, and so consider support for that candidate or issue to be a sound long-term investment. And the business owner might also have some more personal benefit, such as when the owner of my favorite restaurant helped campaign for her husband, who was running for office.
Discussion of what they are, how to apply them to various models, etc. is one thing, but to reject the “whole concept” of personal preferences and their interrelation to decision making is beyond my comprehension. I’m not sure how a worldview like that functions.
In game theory and economics, utility is by definition that which moves an actor to act. Whatever it is that motivates you, that’s what counts as utility for you. I’m not sure how you can “not be sold” on the concept. There are things that motivate people. Those things are called utility. Ideal rational actors act to maximize their utility. Real world actors usually fail to maximize their utility due to imperfect knowledge. But real world actors do not fail to attempt to maximize their utility, because by definition whatever it is they’re aiming at counts as utility.
“Real world actors do not fail to attempt to maximize their utility, because by definition whatever it is they’re aiming at counts as utility.” That’s a circular argument. You’re saying people always choose the most utility and then defining the amount of utility by the fact that people chose it. Cancel out the utility and you’re left with saying that people choose their choices.
Can you measure utility? If a person is offered choices A and B can you tell how much utility is contained in each choice for that person? If he choose A over B, can you determine if A had twice as much utility as B or a hundred times as much utility as B or one percent more utility than B?
I don’t think so. Utility is an intangible and immeasurable abstract. So how do we know utility exists? Because the theory says a person must choose the option with more utility so A must have a larger amount of utility than B even if nobody - including the person who made the choice - can determine how much utility A or B contained.
I drive a Toyota Camry. If you were to ask me why I drive a Toyota Camry instead of a Chevy Malibu, I could give you tangible defined reasons for why I made that choice. It was a rational decision I made on the basis of utility.
I’m also a Buffalo Bills fan. If you were to ask me why I’m a Buffalo Bills fan instead of a New England Patriots fan, I couldn’t tell you. I never made a conscious decision to be a fan of one team over the other.
An economist would argue that all decisions must be made on the basis of utility and therefore I must have decided that being a Buffalo fan contained more utility for me than being a New England fan. And that this is true even if neither the economist or myself can determine what that utility is. The economist just assumes there is some utility in being a Buffalo fan because his theory is that all decisions indicate utility, even in situations where the utility can’t be found.
My opinion is that this isn’t true. Some decisions aren’t based on utility. There was no rational reason why I became a Bills fan instead of a Patriots fan - it could have happened the other way or I could have been a fan of some other team or some other sport. I might have been better off if I had made other choices (I’d probably be a fan of a team with a better record anyway). Utility was not a factor.
It was a lazy little thread; more a rant than a question because I knew the answer (because those business people are idiots). Then the economists arrived. There goes the neighborhood.
Worse yet, some seem to labor under the false economic belief that people make their decisions after consciously comparing the pros and cons and how their decisions will affect them when it is apparent that a large subset of “most people” give little deep thought to what they do and even then concentrate on the positive outcomes. Sure, it makes predicting easier if one uses a simpler model that people are intelligent and act in their actual self interest, but that is proven wrong by driving for an hour and seeing that many drivers are near-suicidal in pursuit of what they imagine is their self-interest at that moment. It is the same in other fields and a more accurate model would take into account that many people are bloody morons who wouldn’t know what’s best for them if it bit them in the ass, but there isn’t enough computing power on the planet to handle it.
Some social theorists would like to protect these people from themselves. I prefer to laugh at them.
