By Paul Weiser
In his programming blog "Codinghorror," Jeff Atwood related a story and its lesson that has vastly wider application. In fact, to the extent that everything - including politics - links to basic economics, it ties very many things together.
In essence, Atwood discovered that when offered a choice of role-playing characters for the coder to improve or make more desirable, players opted for the healer. But once their requests had been implemented, few chose the improved healer. His observation, in a nutshell, was, don't listen to what the users say they do, and even less to what they say they will do - only listen to what they do.
When you think about it, that's as profound as the optimum solution to the prisoner's dilemma (trust each player the first time you meet him, thereafter do what he did the time before). Economically, Atwood's observation tells us the supply-siders are right because the product must always precede its acceptance (you can do all the surveys you want, but only when people lay down their money do you learn that they really wanted Ipods and really didn't want New Coke). Demand is no guide.
Politically and sociologically, Atwood's observation explains the failure of liberal politics and the prevalence of unintended consequences. Liberals try to meet (after creating) demand - with policies which the demanders then refuse to actually buy into. Everyone wants more compliant taxpayers, but nobody wants to pay taxes or comply with regulations.
Also explained is the necessity of conservative politics, which - via surviving policies and ethics - are based not upon what people have cried for or said they'd do, but what they in fact did. America's Framers, for example, took their cues from all human history - not what people said they wanted, but what happened after they got it.
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