KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – May 16, 2026

Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP once.

With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effects support.

Better results, expert support.

Get started today for as low as $25 at WeightWatchers.com.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.

You can hear us on the radio, statewide at AM1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM100.5.

We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.

and Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk

1540, KXEL.

the Jacobson Group, kxl.com slash Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

We're going to have a wonderful show today.

We're going to talk about free market enterprise economy.

And at the midpoint, some great entrepreneurs here in eastern Iowa.

That's the T's, guys.

And we thank our...

General sponsors as well, Jim and Cindy Jandron, who helped run that great enterprise Midwest Renewable Energy LLC out of South Eastern Nebraska.

Ethanol Renewable fuels energy for a strong America.

It's lean, it's clean, and it's green, as well as Jim and Cindy Jandron and their largesse of charity.

in helping fund a life runners life runners dot org go to life runners dot org and order your t-shirt to run and walk for a life like the loving gracious Deborah Jacobson does you know it's also very healthy guys if you walk 10,000 steps a day you reduce your cardio

risks by an incredible percentage but also running and walking for life.

This group builds a culture of life helping expectant mothers and their babies along the way to birth and then after they're born.

Life Runners

go to that website.

Dr. Pat Castle runs this wonderful operation and a lot of young college kids part of this too, young and old running together alike.

So we're going to have the great free marketers from out of you and the Gortney Institute on then Barbara Hames Bryant from the Hames Homes people and then part two of Gortney.

Guys, we are making

free market enterprise, great again, and don't go away.

We'll be right

back.

a presentation of the Gorton Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

My name is Peter Jacobson.

I'm the Gorton University Professor of Economic Education and Research.

And joining me today, we have only the indisputable Dr. Justin Clark, the Menard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics.

Well,

thank you,

Peter.

What an introduction.

So I thought it would be fun to talk today about a thought experiment that

has, you know, ripped straight from the headlines of Twitter, where a bunch of people are arguing about it.

And I know you and I chatted about it for like five minutes yesterday, but I thought it would be fun to kind of break it down, talk about how it might differ from other kind of intuition pumping thought experiments, and then see why we each think what we think.

So, and correct me if I'm wrong, the idea is that you are, everybody gets to, or is forced to

make a choice between two buttons, a red button and a blue button.

Yes.

And the first button is the red button, right?

So the red button, if you press the red button, nothing happens.

No, you've got to lay it out the way that it was originally laid out.

Okay,

then you tell it because this is...

Yeah, yeah.

So there's two buttons.

The first button is the blue button.

You got to start off with a blue button.

Otherwise, the red button doesn't make sense because you can recontextualize the red button.

in the way that you're speaking and you're kind of right.

Here's how it works.

If 50% of people, or I guess 50% plus one, there's not a clear 50%, but if 50% plus one of people press the blue button, then everybody survives.

And that is the blue button.

The red button is that

If you push the red button, you survive no matter what.

Everybody who pushes the red button survives no matter what.

But if more than half the people push the red button, everybody who pushed the blue button dies.

Or another way of saying this is, when you push the red button, only those who push the red button survive if the red button pushes the majority, but both survive if red button pushes the majority.

So again, you've got two buttons, and Justin, you're actually right.

If you're the person who pushes the red button, you definitely don't die, no matter what happens, you don't die.

But if you push the blue button and less than half the people push the blue button, you do die, right?

This is another way to think of it.

So one more time for the audience at home, because it's kind of hard when it's not sitting there right in front of you.

If half the people push the blue button, everybody lives, red and blue.

If half the people push the red button, or more than half the people push the red button, then only the red button pushers live and everybody who pushed blue dies.

And those are your two options, the red and the blue there.

So I think that was setting up right.

I don't know.

Do you have a dispute of the setup?

No, I don't think so.

So there's two options for you to push, a red button and a blue button.

If the red button, if the blue button wins the vote, everybody lives, right?

Yes.

If the red button wins the majority vote, then everybody who pressed the blue button dies.

Correct.

Yes.

OK.

Great.

And the problem is that everybody... Here's

the original wording to harp on it one more time so the folks at home can hear it for the 12th time here.

I

can hear them already.

They're calling for Rust to return.

The original tweet is, everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button.

If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives.

If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who press the red button survive.

Which button would you press?

So that's the original phrasing on the poll.

And the original poll, by the way, blue did win.

And so blue is if blue wins, everybody lives.

Yeah, if blue is if blue wins, everybody lives.

And so there's a lot of controversy over this vote because a lot of really vocal red button pushers like Justin are very upset that when this option is put before the masses, that the masses by and large choose blue.

And so a lot of these people have reconstructed this problem to say that the blue button is a crazy death risk button, and the red button is the guaranteed survival button, right?

Because if everybody, if 100% of people pushed red, then there would be no risk.

Everybody would survive no matter what, right?

And the only people who, the only thing that pushing the blue button does is put you at risk for death.

In other words, the blue button is the only button that can kill you.

So if everybody selects red, then nobody dies, right?

If some people start selecting blue, then there's a chance that people die.

So some of these people are very angry at the obvious results of blue button dominance.

So Jessica, I don't know if you wanted to give your thoughts on it.

Yeah.

So no matter what, if everybody presses the same button, everybody lives.

Yes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

which is one of the reasons I thought this was it.

So also, let's just put our cards on the table.

When we talked about this yesterday, you said, so which button do you press?

And I go, oh, I press the red button, right?

And you said, oh, I can't believe that.

I pressed the blue button, right?

And the arguments online about this have been particularly vehement in, I think, the kind of way that Peter said, which is, I think that both sides think the other side is

wildly irrational.

Yeah, this is like a back, you know, the white and gold versus black and blue dress situation here where the internet is completely divided.

There's no clear like, oh, yeah, I can see your perspective.

It's like, no, you're you're both insane and evil for feeling

differently than

me.

Yeah, and whenever there's something where both sides think the other one is insane and evil, I think that's just fantastic and like a good something good to to explore.

It reminds me kind of of like the trolley problem in the way that the way you describe the payoffs can sometimes change the way people think about it and it might reveal that we have

we're running with a couple different methods of making ethical decisions and that these come apart in situations like this in the same way that they can come apart in versions of the trolley problem or like a prisoner's dilemma.

And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that unlike the prisoner's dilemma and you know for readers

The prisoners dilemma, classically, is you and somebody else, or you've been caught or charged with a crime.

If you both confess, that is, you rat out on each other, you both confess to the crime, you each get five years in prison.

If neither of you confess and you both stay silent, you each get one year in prison.

If one of you confesses and the other stays silent, the person who rats the other one out walks free.

the person who stayed silent gets 20 years in prison.

And so those are the payoffs.

And interestingly, what's rational in a prisoner's dilemma is to betray or to rat out your partner.

Because no matter what your partner does, you're better off if you confess.

If your partner stays silent,

then you have the choice between one year in prison or zero years in prison, and zero is better than one year in prison.

So it's better for you to confess.

If your partner confesses, then you have the choice between 20 years in prison and five years in prison, and five years in prison is better.

And the problem with this is that it seems like the socially optimum outcome

And if that's what we mean, the outcome with the least amount of prison years is if we both stay silent.

But it's in our individual best interest for both of us to confess on each other or to rat each other out.

And so when you run this...

with when I do it with first year philosophy students we can you know uh they often go okay well what if we can talk to each other beforehand and I go great it's you and me let's talk to each other about it and I go I promise I won't turn you in and they go great me too and then I go all right so which way do you vote and they go just like you said we're not turning each other in and I go I just turned you in yeah I'm free right um and this one seemed

This thought experiment, the red and blue button seemed more interesting to me because if I'm a red button pusher, that is, all the blue button people die, I'm not trying to fool anybody.

I'm saying, please, press this red button, the blue button.

has a risk of death.

Yeah, so unlike the prisoner's dilemma, the payout for both people, if the red button is defecting, which in reality it's not, but if red button is the defect strategy, the payoff for both people defecting is equal to the payoff for both people cooperating, which makes it, in defense of red button people, it makes it better than the prisoner's dilemma.

Like it should be even more certain because not only are you

uh, you know, getting the best possible payoff for yourself, but you're also not necessarily betraying the other person to do so unless they act in, uh, you know, a way that you don't want them to act.

There's no, like you said, no deception.

Yeah.

And where like the prisoner's dilemma might fall afoul of Kant's maxim of universality, where something's moral only if the goal of my action is achievable in a world where everybody acts the way I do.

In the prisoner's dilemma situation, that's, that can't, you know, I can't get zero or one year in prison if the other person's acting the same way that I do,

right?

But in this situation, if I'm a red button pusher, I go, yes, yes.

In fact, it's the best possible outcome if everybody acts the way that I'm acting, right?

So it does, red button pushing doesn't fall afoul of cons maxim either.

And just to spell out, I think some people might have trouble thinking through it.

So if your intuition is something like, well, I want everyone to live, that's why I press the blue button.

Yes, that's

correct.

That's very smart.

Those people are

correct.

And remember, it's only 50% of the people have to agree with that to make it the case that everybody lives.

And those are blue button pushers, right?

Yeah, the the blue button pushers, they want everybody to live.

And so they push the blue button because if the majority hits the blue button, everybody lives.

Yeah, everybody lives.

And for red button pushers, it's I'm going to live no matter what if I press the red button.

There's

zero

risk.

There's zero risk involved if I press the red button.

And I can advertise that fact.

You guys, you should press the red button.

So give me the sales pitch for the blue button.

Yeah, the Salesforce for the blue button is easy.

It's that, you know, some people, in fact, most people are not going to think of it that way.

And so like we have to live in the reality rather than like the homo economic model.

And so here's the Salesforce for the blue button.

A lot of people will feel guilty if they push the red button and other people push the blue button.

And a lot of people are afraid that people are going to push the blue button.

And so because they're afraid people are gonna push the blue button and the majority will be red, they also push the blue because they don't want those people who accidentally push the blue button to die.

And by accidentally, I don't mean accidentally, but who are the people who don't realize, right?

So again, here's the logical framing.

The worst case scenario in a lot of people's mind is I am a red button pusher and red wins, but a lot of people picked blue.

It's like, imagine it's, imagine it's 51 49 red, right?

Three and a half billion people die.

And it's like, you know, imagine you're the tiebreaker.

Now we obviously that's very unlikely, but you know, if you're one of the very slim victory and you picked red, it's like, Oh man, by picking red,

if enough of us would have picked blue, everybody would still be alive.

And so I think the general thought is, well, it's way easier for us all to hit blue than it is for 100% of us to hit red.

I think that's the logic is it's way easier to hit 50% blue

than it is 100% red, because that's actually the survival condition in both scenarios.

In order for 100% of people to survive in the red world, we need 100% of people to hit red button.

In order for 100% of people to survive in blue world, we only need 50% of people hitting blue button.

Now, the response that I've seen online is pretty rational.

The response is...

But there's never any risk to anybody if people select the red button, right?

Like, if everybody just pushes the red button, no risk is introduced, this button cannot kill anybody by itself.

The only way it can kill people is if people select the blue button instead.

So the blue button is actually the risky button that kills people.

This is the reframe that I've seen online.

And so I think to some extent we'll have to come back after break to get into more of the details of why here.

But ultimately, my reasoning when I think about this is that I think that most people are going to hit the blue button or close to most people are going to hit the blue button, which is correct.

That is empirically what we see when we do this poll on Twitter.

And so because of that, I don't want to defect to red, even if it's safer for me, because the more people who adopt that, the closer we get to this red 51 blue 49 scenario where we have mass death.

So that's the kind of the ultimate case for blue versus red in my opinion.

I do think that there's like underlying cycle and people try to manipulate the psychological experiment a little bit too, which we can talk about after the break.

But I don't know, any thoughts on the case for blue?

Let's take a quick break and then come back.

You're on a GLP one.

But now you're wondering, how do I manage my side effects?

What do I need to stay strong?

because reaching your weight loss goals can take more than meds.

That's where Weight Watchers MedPlus comes in.

Get access to trusted experts, food plans that work with your body, and habit coaching to keep you on track.

Plus access to GLP-1 medication.

Get started at WeightWatchers.com.

All medical services are provided through our affiliated Medical Group Weight Watchers Clinic.

Medications require eligibility and prescription.

Individual results may vary.

See site for more

details.

PPE, which stands for philosophy, politics, and economics.

Each of these three fields is interesting in their own right, but they intersect in ways that are important to understand, both individually and for your community.

If you find philosophy fascinating but want to make sure that your study of the subject is practical, if you enjoy economic analysis but want to see how economic laws interact with moral principles, if you are interested in politics but want to explore how economic and ethical realities constrain our political choices,

you should consider the PPE program at Ottawa University.

The boarding institute at Ottawa University is the best place in the Midwest for free enterprise education and its contribution to human flourishing, faith, and economics in action.

We have some great high school student programs like PPE Fest.

This is an event where students get to listen to some world-renowned speakers and then participate in competition geared around philosophy, politics, and economics.

Our everyday economics program is just a half day on a Saturday

And we will have an integrated discussion about common sense economics.

We have a college credit microeconomics course that runs every eight weeks.

Your high school student can earn college credit for the special price of $200.

If you know some students interested in programs like these, contact Peter, Justin, or Russ today.

OK, welcome back from our break.

We've been talking about the red versus blue button.

Once again, the red button, if you push it, you are guaranteed not to die.

But if the majority push red, everybody who pushed blue dies.

On the flip side, the blue button

You live if the majority push blue.

In fact, everybody lives if the majority push blue, including the red button pushers.

But if you're a blue button pusher and most people pick red, you're dead.

If that didn't make any sense, go back to the beginning of the podcast where we explained it 12 other times.

Justin is a proud red pusher because some philosopher named Kant told him that it was okay a few hundred years ago.

And I am a blue button pusher because I don't want people to die.

So I think that's the summary of the first half of the podcast so far.

Yeah, I'm a reluctant red button pusher.

I could be convinced to push blue.

The situation you mentioned earlier, which I think is interesting, is when you feel like suppose you're the tiebreaker, right?

If everybody else is already pressed and you're the tiebreaker and it's even, then it's a no-brainer, right?

You press the blue button.

Sure.

Right?

Because that saves everybody.

Yeah.

Right?

And I 100% agree with that.

And I also agree with what you said.

I think what this really comes down to is you really have to consider what you think everybody else is going to do

here.

That's what makes the big difference.

And I think that's where people who disagree about this might disagree a little bit.

And the way you can kind of bring this out is by saying something like, OK, well, suppose that it was an audience of

economists instead or people who have done a lot of game theory before.

Then your criterion for oh my gosh actually I think the baseline answer might

not be blue, it might be red, right?

These people who are more inclined to write out the expected value of each or something like that.

Yeah, I would say even though I'm a proud blue presser, I think part of what this comes down to is that blue pressers on average have less ability to comprehend thought experiments, right?

I think this is really closely tied to what happens when you lecture on the trolley problem.

I've seen it happen a million times when we'll be doing student events.

Sometimes it's with high schoolers, sometimes undergrads.

And Justin will talk about the trolley problem of, oh, well, you know, the card's going down the track.

It's going to hit three people, but if you pull the lever, it only hits one person.

Do you pull the lever?

And somebody's like, well, can we jump in front of the train and hit it and like make it derail or throw rocks to prevent it?

And it's like, no, it's a thought experiment, right?

The whole point is I want you to choose.

of one or the other.

So one thing you'll see blue button pushers use a lot, which I think is kind of cheating.

I actually don't think my explanation from earlier from the first half is cheating about the psychology of the masses.

But one thing that they will do is kind of cheat and do things like, well, what about when you put babies in the room?

And the baby's gonna end up pushing a random button.

And so you've got all these babies pushing blue, and if everybody picks red, you just killed a bunch of babies.

So now you're a baby killer too, like is that what a red button pusher is?

It's just a baby killer.

I think that

There's a lot of people on blue who are operating, and I've actually seen this explicitly said, who are operating that way.

What I would say is like, yeah, I mean, if we were actually in the room, dude, this would be a valuable thing to think about.

But this is a thought experiment, right?

The point is not for you to be like, oh, what button would a baby push?

What if the baby put, that kind of defeats the purpose in my view of the thought experiment.

The thought experiment is a coordination.

question to some extent of rational people, right?

What happens is the is the language written in Chinese?

What, you know, is it only in English?

I could so I think all of those things are kind of tangential.

So I think what happens is a lot of people who support the blue button do so because like they're kind of making it too concrete and not abstracts enough.

I don't know if you agree with that assessment.

But that's what I've noticed.

Yeah, it might be like that.

IQ distribution meme where the middle goes one way and both ends go the other way.

Yeah,

yeah,

blue button, red button, blue button.

The other way, red button, blue button, red

button.

Sure, okay.

We just,

yeah, well, we just disagree.

about who the midwits are

right yeah yeah no you're the midwit i get to be the low IQ guy though i'm fine with that the i could be a friend of the hooded guy on the other side of this region

yeah um i think that you can get like the same

the same effect of thinking like okay well what if people knew more about game theory or whatever if you just switch the percentages right or increase the amount of blue button pushes that need to get that need to be pressed before everybody's saved so instead of 50 percent it's 75 percent right and if more than 25 percent of the people press red then all blue button pusher stop right and I think that's

that's functionally the same as saying, well, you know, what if, what if you thought there were more people who were inclined to press blue?

And I guess maybe we just disagree about how many people would actually press red.

Or, I don't know, because I don't trust the polls, but I'm also like, I'm not just uncertain.

Which one is where you don't know the odds, but you don't know the distribution?

Not sure.

I can't remember.

The different kinds of uncertainty.

But I don't even have a good idea about where I think the line falls.

And I don't trust.

any of the Twitter polls.

The Twitter poll was representative.

I was correct.

Most people do.

Listen, I understand the red position perfectly.

And I actually think there's a good meme that someone posted that does highlight sort of the absurdity of the blue position.

Again, I remain a proud blue pusher because I think you're right.

I think the differences level of confidence.

I'm confident most people would pick blue.

And so I would also pick blue.

But here is a reframing of this problem that shows how kind of blue is actually pretty absurd.

And so it's reframed actually as a trolley problem, funny enough.

It says, oh no, a trolley's headed toward the track.

Push the red button and don't get on the track or push the blue button and get on the track.

And at least 50% of people do the same, the train will stop and no one will die.

And that is a completely fair reframing of what's going on with this button problem.

Like it

has

exactly the same logical outcome, right?

And so when you

put it that way, and when you frame it that way, it is really foolish to hit the blue button, right?

As a thought experiment, it wouldn't make sense for people to push a blue button.

You could say, oh, what if like stupid people, you know, and then we could save them.

Yeah, I think that like, if you break the thought experiment that way, then yeah, absolutely, it makes sense to push the blue button.

But the whole point of the thought experiment is to demonstrate that the,

which button is superior in a way that like, you know, from a reasoning perspective, right?

And so, yeah, again, my final conclusion is here, like, I think it's kind of cheating to be like, well, what happens when babies push the blue button?

But I do think it is fair to say,

that I think based on psychology and the framing of the original question, most people are going to want to hit that 50% with the blue button.

And so even if those people are like somewhat mistaken about the percent, like you don't want to leave those people out to dry.

And so that's why it makes sense to try to kind of societally convince people to be blue button pushers, even if the red button actually is honestly the better option, which it is, right?

I think the trolley framing lays that out perfectly.

The red button is staying off the track.

The blue button is getting on the track and hoping

enough other people get on the track that the train stops at 50% right which is kind of crazy.

Yeah so let me let me tell you why I think I have the kind of um also just knee-jerk reaction of I'm pressing the red button um which is that I think a lot of our social problems get framed as if they are this type of situation or the idea is something like if we could just get enough people together um

and get everybody on our side, then the entire system would change and everything would work fine.

And so I think about this with if it's single-payer medical care or a bunch of issues that are like, if we just mobilize everybody and get everybody together on the same page, that's the key to solving these problems.

I generally don't think that works for the social problems that are conceived in this way, usually.

Yeah, and spot.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

That objection can't work against this thought experiment, because that objection is something like, the thought experiment is, let's suppose the number of cows in the field is n. And my objection is, but what if the number of cows in the field isn't n?

And it's like, no.

According to the thought experiment, this is.

exactly the type of social situation where if enough people did get together, it would solve the problem.

So I think it's just maybe from having my finger burned on that particular stove so often.

Sure.

I need jerk reaction is something like, oh, no, no, no, I'm going to immediately take the one, choose the option that's obviously in my own best self interest, kind of save yourself first, put on your.

Yeah.

And honestly, you've, you've been talking there and not for exactly the same reason, but you've caused me to rethink it a little bit too, that I think ultimately I would be a red button pusher.

And my reasoning is, well, first of all, I would advise all my friends and family to push the red button.

So like if there was the ability to talk.

There's not a single person that would say, oh, you got to push the blue button.

I would say, no, like, how about you push?

Like if I was talking about wife, it's like, definitely you need to push the red button, right?

Like our kids need you.

We'll make them push the red button too, right?

And when I was thinking about that, I realized, well, actually, when people are faced with this button, they're not going to respond in the Twitter poll way, right?

Like the people are not going to just be like, oh, I'm going to hit the blue button.

People are going to be like, oh, if I hit the blue button, I could actually die.

And so I do think that when the button's actually in front of people that

it won't just be a small majority.

I think it'll be a clear majority pushes the red button for survival's sake.

And in that case, if 70% of people are pushing the red button, it does not make sense out of principle to push the blue button, right?

So the blue button's best case is, wow, if it's gonna be a really tight margin, we really need to encourage pushing the blue button because then everybody can be saved.

But in reality, it's not gonna be in a tight margin.

Everyone's gonna be like, well, the red one means I don't die.

And so they're gonna push for red, right?

And so unfortunately, maybe like,

It's almost like second best is blue.

uh, first best is red, but neither first or second best are even available and third best is red again.

Uh, and so first best world, everybody picks red, but that's not going to happen because some people are going to pick blue.

Uh, and if the majority pick blue, everybody survives.

So blue makes sense, but that's not going to happen either because people want to live.

And so you need to pick red, right?

It's, it's like your third best option is the first available one.

So I do think you brought me around to full red.

Uh,

if your sales pitch is for blue, you're like,

You're doing the Canadian government's work, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true, essentially.

I mean, if, if, especially if the survivability isn't it.

So yeah, ultimately, I think everybody is a, all the, I think a lot of red button pushers are people who are honest about the, or they just understand like the underlying experiment.

So they're just like, no, the rational thing is red.

And.

I'd say about half the blue button pushers are bleeding heart people who want 100% of people to live.

And the other half of blue button pushers are virtue signalers who can't be trusted.

And so I think given that red actually does make more sense.

If the button is real, I think in the thought experiment, I kind of make sense to choose blue because the button's not real.

But if the button's real, then actually I'd probably be a red pusher and encourage my family to do the same.

Yeah.

And what swayed you there was a rethinking of

about what actually other people are going to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's the fun thing about the experiment is it's a coordination game.

The only reason for the disagreement is, again, the trade-off is if we could just get 50% of the people,

everyone would live, or we could select red, but then maybe some people are going to select blue and die, right?

And so

the blue button people are like, oh, we can get the 50%, we can do it.

And the red button people are, I think, just a little more sober in that, like, well, everybody has the opportunity to hit the red button and live.

So I don't feel bad if some people foolishly choose the blue button, right?

So,

yeah.

Let's just feel bad.

Yeah.

So, all right.

Well, I think that's everything from me.

Do you have any other thoughts on it?

No.

Yeah.

Thought experiments are fun.

Ultimately,

okay.

What do you think Russ Bush is?

Yeah, me

too.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's Russ analyzes it like an economist, right?

But you and Russ are kind of our rational, you know, rationality supreme.

I'm more of like a, you know, humanomic sort of person.

Yeah, ultimately, like the interesting thing here is it comes down to one of these like, there's so many media based on this concept of like, you know, coordination games, right?

If you watch, what is it?

Golden balls at the end, you get the opportunity to

like splits or steel right if you watch a you know Mr. Beast video or you watch the TV show Squid Game I think there's similar like setups there of like oh everybody can survive or you know that so

I think the interesting thing about this thought experiment is again, we're ultimately down to a coordination game.

There's sort of like a first best option, but people like sort of try to coordinate to the second best option and whether or not it would work is kind of the interesting question.

Luckily, we don't have any button pushes in the future.

I don't think hopefully not.

All right.

Well, with that, this has been a production of the Gortney Institute.

If you have some time, go ahead and leave a like or a five star rating or depends on your.

app that you're using to listen to the podcast.

But whatever the highest rating is, is what we're looking for.

That is similar to pushing the red button.

If you leave a lower rating, you might die if you're not on the side of the majority.

I can't say that for sure, but it's a possibility.

So other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP once.

With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effects support.

Better results, expert support.

Get started today for as low as $25 at WeightWatchers.com.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.

You can hear us on the radio, statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.

We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.

And Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.

listen to that crackling Rosie in the background.

John Jacobson here on the Jacobson report on this glorious May Saturday morning.

I am here as we are every week with our tremendous

corporate sponsor, Hames, the Homes People, Hames Homes, manufactured Homes Beautiful, Safe, Affordable.

They're in Eastern Iowa Cedar Rapids Metro and Curtis Hames, part of that multi-generational family that has provided such tremendous home and hearth for people.

They've been doing this.

for over half century and as an Iowa broadcaster I can tell you that they were running tremendous Neil Diamond backed commercials going back about 55 years ago ladies and gentlemen on what's now KGEAN it was WMT television as well at the time channel two and guys we're gonna go back in the vault to Amir 22 years.

ago because as a grandfather myself looking for more quality time to spend with family I want to play this golden jewel more time to play from television in May of 2004.

I love

it.

What a pleasure and what a blast from the past here.

I love hearing those old commercials that would have been college for me.

Indeed.

And I am just what a pleasure.

Thank you

again.

Well, Curtis, your family has been multi-generational stewards and worthy custodians of this important vocation, guys.

Bringing hearth and home safe, beautiful and affordable for people is there's no greater calling.

You guys have done it with a Christian ethos and fair and square dealing backed up by rock-ribbed patriotism forged by the late great Curt Norma and their service of our nation.

Curtis, let's talk about the here and now.

It's beautiful out there and you guys have got wonderful communities out there at Haymes Homes there in Southwest Cedar Rapids.

You've got two great communities.

Let's start talking about Summit View and Grand View.

I

love to hear about that.

I love to brag about it.

We are in full spring.

Spring is in bloom.

It's the selling season.

People are ready after taxes.

People are ready.

School is winding down.

What a wonderful time of year.

to get ready to find your new home.

Indeed.

And you guys have done some nice blog writing.

And if you go to that great website, HamesHomes.com, you're going to realize that one of the reasons that these are such safe, family-friendly neighborhoods is I'll call it your vetting process.

On the blog right now, you've got this wonderful missive called the Hames Community Approach to Resident Screening.

I think it's phenomenal.

And Kurt is the paradigm, is the protocol for what everybody should be doing across the USA.

You guys do it splendidly.

Talk a little bit about that if you would.

Absolutely.

The phrasing we like to use here at the Hames community is planned community.

So rather than, you know, a community where it'd be a free-for-all or there might be some challenges, our expectation

is a clean, safe, wholesome, family-friendly community.

So we do have a brief background check, and we're going to make sure that everybody who lives in the Hames communities is going to pass some parameters as far as under no recent criminal background, no sex offender registry, and some basic guidance on previous landlord tenant issues.

We want to have a safe plan

planned community welcoming to everyone, but we do have a brief background check to make sure it's going to be comfortable for everyone.

Here with the great Curtis Hames.

Curtis, we'll talk about a few other things yet today, but I want to talk about the kudos that consistently are lobbed from your homeowners, your residents there.

Every week I find new

testimonials.

Here's Belinda Becharell.

If you want to live in a community that cares, choose a Hames Homes community.

From Annie and Ron Harmon, you all have great caring hearts.

You are greatly appreciated.

From Tony Floreschinger, living in this wonderful, safe, and clean area is our dream come true.

And from Genevieve,

Angersola.

I have liked living in the village because of the spacious lots.

And finally from Michael Heffern, wonderful community to live and enjoy retirement.

Curtis, they love you.

Well, I love all those compliments.

That's the best advertising that we can have.

Someone who's come to stay.

These are all very long-term residents.

These are not, you know, paid advertisers.

These are people who are long-term residents.

I pride on posting.

the comments from people who've been here a long time, and that we go way back with.

I'm very, very proud of those.

Um, I don't like to brag on it too much.

I do, do love the compliments for people who really know what they're talking about.

Well, it is that aspect of neighborliness and friendliness.

And you know, my wife and I, we're seniors now, we're of that age.

And, uh, I look at Mary Croft and Kenny Selker, they just synopsize it and punctuate it here.

Neighbors are friendly and so helpful as senior citizens.

We are very content to live in such a well run park.

I mean and talk about park you have amenities Curtis is like a park.

You've got so many

Outdoor amenities from storm shelters to pantry to frisbee golf There's a lot of green space talk about

that.

We love being out here on the suburbs We love being close to the edge of town where you're close to the highway But what that allows us for is a lot of real green space.

This is an area that used to be a farm 30 years ago So we are out.

We are out in the suburbs.

We have lots of green space.

We have older trees We have a lot of walking trails grass for kids to run around

in, community areas, we have volleyball courts, swing sets, we have a dog park.

What we want is a welcoming area for our homeowners to feel safe and comfortable.

Here with the Great Curtis Hames from Hames Homes,

beautiful manufactured homes in Southwest Cedar Rapids.

Curtis, we have a new Federal Reserve Board chair, Mr. Warsh.

I think when inflation cools down just a little bit, he's going to be in the mood to cut rates, but now already is a superb time to get financing vehicles and to get on board and to get in a home.

Talk about how you guys open the financing portal, so to speak.

Our job is

to make everything as easy as possible.

You're going to have everything that you need when you shop at Hames Homes and you visit with Clint or myself.

We're going to be able to provide guidance on down payment, securing a loan.

We can make suggestions.

We can help people apply.

We're the liaison to the lenders.

We sell insurance.

You don't have to buy our insurance, but we can offer a quote to ensure that you're getting the best possible rate.

Very simple, very easy.

We help you get your cable TV set up.

We can help you get your internet, your utilities, a one stop shop.

And we are the one person you need to visit with to get everything taken care

of.

I love it.

I'm sitting there in my head saying one stop shop.

That's what my wife and I want for everything anymore.

Just everything from the cable TV to the lighting, the streets, the landscaping, the financing, the vetting, all of that.

And Curtis, you guys have got storm shelters too.

Absolutely.

We learned through the derecho that our homes have never been more sturdy and they're set up correctly, but that is an amenity that some people like.

They're here.

Each community has two strategically placed storm shelters.

They're brick buildings built into the ground.

Our product is very secure and very safe.

If people would be more comfortable in a storm shelter, anytime there's a weather watch we have those unlocked.

they're available to all home on.

That so honors the zeitgeist of what Kurt and Norma Haymes would be all about as they were so protective in securing our country and continuing our fight for freedom during that Cold War vector era there.

Kurtis

How do these guys come by and see?

I know a lot are listening here on North America's original blowtorch KXEL this morning, the initial 50,000 clear channel blowtorch, ironically emanating from Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, the AM signal loan 21 states for Canadian provinces.

How do they drive by?

How they find you digitally and how do they do that great old Marion legacy phone number, Curtis?

We love having people come in.

It'll be a beautiful weekend this weekend.

We're here every weekend.

Between Clinton and myself, we're here seven days a week.

Please stop by.

We'd love to work by appointments, but we love people coming and checking out our own buttonhouses.

5410 Wabash Street, Southwest, is the Grandview office where we're located at.

Please stop in.

Give us a call.

319-377-4863.

If you're not quite ready to make a trip out here, we have a great Facebook page.

And we have a great website that's going to have all of our inventory.

We keep it current all the time.

Everything that we have available, we're always refurbishing something new.

Whenever you look on our website, that home is going to be for sale.

Hayneshomes.com.

Guys, before I leave, I just want to take this personal privilege, along with my engineer here, Sean Torres, as we went to Des Moines at the Stony Creek

in there in Johnson for the annual Iowa Broadcast News Association Convention and Awards Banquet and Dinner.

And this program, thanks to the sponsorship of Hames Homes, winning for all market, large, medium, and small market radio, winning awards for excellence, for outstanding in public affairs and political coverage.

Curtis, thanks to you and your family, your program, winning awards in Iowa year after year.

Congratulations.

Thank you for the kind words, and we love, love supporting your show.

Thank you again.

And one of these days, we're going to get in sync on live remotes.

Maybe June, May was a busy month.

We might be able to pull this off in June.

Stay tuned for further details on that.

The great

Curtis Ames here again, guys.

Saturday on KXEL with Jake, we will be back after

this.

Get access to trusted experts, food plans that work with your body, and habit coaching to keep you on track.

Plus access to GLP-1 medication.

Get started at WeightWatchers.com.

All medical services are provided through our affiliated Medical Group Weight Watchers Clinic.

Medications require eligibility and prescription.

Individual results may vary.

See site for more details.

Economics is the study of human choice in the world we live.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

By investigating faith in economics, we can learn how they lead to human flourishing.

This is the Faith in Economics podcast, a presentation of the Gourtney Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

I'm Luke Graham, producer and graduate assistant for the Gourtney Institute.

With us, we have Dr. Russ McCullough, the founder of the Ghorney Institute and Wayne Angel Chair of Economics.

We have Dr. Justin Clark, the Menard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics.

We have Dr. Peter Jacobson, the Ghorney Professor of Economic Education and Research.

And finally, Graduate Assistant Elect, Lawson Medlin.

All right, so we thought it'd be good to kind of take a step back and look at some issues surrounding what economists call public choice.

And it's really discussing the political markets with maybe private markets.

And it's a very rich area.

There's a famous Nobel laureate, Jim Buchanan, who really headed up a lot.

And he happened to be at

the school where Peter came from, so we'll call Peter some sort of sub-expert.

Maybe not Nobel worthy yet, but we have high hopes.

The general gist, if I just give a thumbnail, is that, you know, when we hire these people in the government, they don't become selfless angels that somehow do good without the constraints that we normally have in markets.

And what I mean, market constraints is profit loss.

So you do an activity and it loses money, you stop doing that activity and you change to something else.

And government doesn't have those same types of constraints.

So that's one area that I think

public choice has addressed that we have self-interested people who get elected and they can't get away from their self-interest as they try to do serve the public good.

Peter, you want to take it from

there?

The first thing that kind of helps us understand public choice is to recognize that as a field, it's kind of a reaction.

Let's start with that.

And so in the early 1900s to around the 1950s, there was a field called public finance and economics.

And here's like a very short example that summarizes public finance.

One theory that was out there was that

And the theory that's true in economics, I believe, but one theory that's out there is the idea of diminishing marginal utility.

And what some scholars did is they applied this idea of diminishing marginal utility to money.

And what they said is, well, the more money you have, the less an additional unit of money is worth to you.

If that's the case and we know sort of that rate at which the utility is going away or the happiness you get from an additional dollar is going away, if a poor person values a dollar at five times what a rich person does, and if we know that for a fact, what we could do is we could design a tax system that would improve the total utility or happiness or welfare of everyone in this society.

And that looks like a progressive tax.

You tax the rich and you give that money to the poor.

And if you do that, you can sort of

create this optimal tax situation.

So public finance had a lot of insights, but that's one example of an insight.

So what public finance did to say, let's look at this big social utility function that our society has, and then let's figure out what policies could make that social utility function achieve some higher number.

That's what public finance was.

And just let me add that with the social utility functions, I'll never forget my major professor.

So this is public.

public choice, public finance, public economics was my major and he said okay so we all know that we really can't compare utility functions among across individuals and it really can't be measured that way into a social utility function but let's assume that you can.

and then away we went and spent the whole course using mathematical functions that represented social utility.

So I always thought that was kind of funny.

We just assume it away and let's assume we can.

Now there are a few economists early on in the 50s who started to kind of implicitly in their work recognize that this was flawed.

We've got like Anthony Downs or Duncan Black.

These are some economists, even as early as Excel, really, which would have been in the 1800s.

There are some economists who kind of recognize that this program didn't exactly work.

But nobody explicitly explains why until James Buchanan, who's widely considered to be like one of the founding fathers of public choice theory.

And Buchanan's insight was this, is that in those public finance models, we treat government like a black box.

It's just this thing that exists and it spits out corrections to this social welfare function that we also presume exists.

And it doesn't really have any desire other than to maximize social utility.

But Buchanan points out this is a really weird assumption for economists to make because we don't make this assumption about any other organization in society.

And so, for example, you know, when we analyze companies and we say that a company has the ability to maybe pollute without bearing the cost of the pollution,

we say that companies are going to over-pollute.

They're going to generate a negative externality.

Why do we say that?

Because the owner of the company is maximizing their own profit.

And there's no price or cost to polluting, so therefore do it.

Right, exactly.

So when a firm is in place, we recognize that, oh, the individuals are acting in their own self-interest.

So what James Buchanan said is politics is much the same.

Politicians aren't just, you know, necessarily interested in the social welfare function, even if they could know what that is, which assumes a lot by itself.

But they have their own self-interest, and governments aren't, you know, black boxes.

They're composed of individuals.

And those individuals, just like private individuals, are willing to make exchanges, some legal, some not, in order to further their own interests.

And there's no reason to believe that their own interests will correspond with the interest of the people who elect them.

It's not obvious why those two things should be connected any more than it is that...

a business owner will just choose not to pollute because they care about the people around them or something like

that.

Yeah, and it's not like they're doing some sort of monetary exchange.

So they like golf.

They like steak and lobster dinners.

They like to be pampered and treated with respect.

And so the power aspect starts to play in distorted ways compared to what, let's say, to profit maximizing companies, how they might engage with each other.

It's different with government power.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

So the exchange looks like it's different in different situations.

But one key thing to realize now, a lot of times people will say public choice is bad because it assumes badly of people, like it's a bad tool of analysis because we assume people are greedy.

But that's not actually what's going on.

Public choice is symmetric with its assumptions.

And so all public finance theory said people self-interested, governments altruistic.

That's what public finance theory did.

But public choice theory says no, people are self-interested, and people in government are also self-interested.

And so the assumptions about the people in the different institutions are the same, rather than arbitrarily deciding these people have good intentions, altruistic intentions, and these people have bad intentions.

So actually, public choice as a theory has less value judgments in it than public finance.

It requires you to make less assumptions about certain people being bad, certain people being good.

And it comes like to kind of

characterized almost like a marketplace where in the political markets, the households and businesses are paying their politicians with votes and campaign contributions.

And in response, the supply of policy and regulations and other changes comes from these two sources, elected officials and then bureaucrats.

So there's an important distinction there.

So we've got bureaucrats who are employees of the government.

and then you have the elected officials that we're all familiar with.

And so they have slightly different motivations as well.

They could change policy and then the bureaucrats get to mold what that all the details of batting the eyes and crossening the T's.

And so sometimes they have perverse incentives to mold it a certain way after Congress passes, you know, forgive student loans, $10,000.

And then that's what's given to the bureaucrats who then have to mold in a bunch of details where there could be favoritism or other things played into how it gets molded.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you give me an example of institutional behavior that is like a concrete example and explain how public choice theory is better at explaining why this happens or why this institutional behavior would flummox somebody who believed in traditional public finance?

Yeah, we could probably come to an example.

And before I get to the example, I want to step one, step forward to from what we've talked about so far.

A listener at home might say, well, I'm confused because the reason that we should expect politicians to pay differently is we elect them.

And so a critique could be, no, politicians care about our interests because they're afraid of getting voted out of office.

Well, first off, that mechanism actually does occur in markets and actually is maybe even a little better in markets.

It's a lot easier to vote with your dollars than it is with a yearly ballot or whatever.

But we also have this possibility

of what what's the public choice economists point out as a rational ignorance.

That is, voters who have to pay a little bit of the cost of a specific policy, those voters might not have a big incentive to learn about it.

On the other hand, special interest groups

who receive a lot of benefit from particular policies, they have a lot of incentive to learn about things and lobby about things.

This is the logic of special interest is that there's concentrated benefits.

And so there's big incentives to learn about benefits, but dispersed costs.

And so if the cost is $1 per person, then this isn't a big deal.

A good example of this, Justin, one thing that might be perplexing is, for example, the classic is sugar subsidies and tariffs and quotas in the United States.

So the current policy, and I'm going to forget the particular numbers, but the current policy that bans a certain amount of sugar importation into the country, that policy you can actually trace the benefits to it.

And you can trace the cost of the policy.

And so it's something like the American consumer pays, I don't remember us, you might know, two or three dollars more for like a pound of sugar.

than they would, if not for the quotas on importation of sugar into the

country.

No, I have to admit, I didn't even know it was that high

if it is.

Maybe it's just one dollar,

but let's just... That's pretty

significant.

Yeah, it's pretty significant.

I think cotton,

I know, is another

one.

And so you think of like one dollar per person per year, so maybe it's per year, maybe that's it actually.

It's three dollars per year.

That makes a lot more sense.

Yeah, three dollars per year more.

Let's imagine that's what it is.

It's somewhere in the range of one to three.

And so you can think, well, that's a very small amount per person.

It probably is not worth your time to try to get that policy reversed if it only costs you $3 per year.

But recognize 300 million people, $3, that's actually a billion dollars for the country here approximately.

The benefits to American, this basically goes to corn growers because they produce corn syrup as a substitute for cane sugar.

That's why we have Coke with corn syrup in other countries have Coke with sugar.

The benefits of farmers is actually something like

if you add it all up, all the farmers benefit, something like one-fifth of that cost.

And so our farmers are getting a benefit somewhere in the realm of like $200 million, and the cost to American taxpayers is $1 billion.

And this is per year.

And so this is a very weird policy, and here's why it's weird.

Instead of taking, you know, $1 billion from American taxpayers and providing a $200 million benefit, we could literally just tax Americans

$1 each, give it to those same farmers and have an extra $800 million left over to do whatever we want.

And so your question might be, well, why on earth would we support a policy where we're creating these benefits which are way dwarfed by the costs?

Why not just have this little tax policy or some sort of more efficient policy?

And the answer is basically the special interest logic is that there's politicians in particular states who are very heavily supported by

people in the corn industry, for example, who produce corn here for corn farmers.

Agricultural states like Iowa, this is a really big deal.

And when bills come across the desk of these legislators, they have a really big incentive to make sure that corn farmers are always supported.

And so when we will talk about opening up trade to cane sugar growers in Brazil,

these farmers will always oppose it because it will hurt their bottom line.

Yeah and so the dangers widespread costs and concentrated benefits.

That's right.

That's what Peter just kind of explained that if we're all it's all costing us a buck who cares but if that 300 and you know

cost per person in the United States, 330 million people, that's 330 million bucks.

If those benefits all accrue to five sugar growers or whatever, it's multiple millions of concentrated benefits, which gives them a lot of incentive to lobby their politicians to keep those policies in place.

Meanwhile, the average Joe says, who cares?

It's a buck.

And so it's not in any individual's incentive with that's costing a buck to

protested or care much about it.

That's the rational ignorance part.

Yeah.

So as long as it's an example, Justin, but it gets your question.

Yeah.

And I really think one of the really important things there is that wealth is being destroyed in that.

Yes.

Not just that it's going to a concentrated people, concentrated

people.

Yeah, good

point.

Yeah.

Anytime the incremental

costs are higher than the incremental benefits of a policy move.

Wealth is being destroyed.

Yeah.

I mean, it's as simple as that.

And that's what our marginal analysis in the town class is all about, is

trying

to find wealth gaining moves and getting rid of a policy like that as a wealth gaining move.

Yes.

So it's a quota, like we said.

So the people who grow the sugar, who still sell it to Americans just at a limited rate, those people are worse off because they'd like some more.

The consumers are worse off because now

the sugar is more expensive because there's less of it and they have to buy a more expensive like chemically created corn sugar.

The only people who benefit are these farmers of the corn and people involved in the corn syrup industry, but their benefit is actually less than the cost of post everybody else.

So yeah, wealth destroying, there's less wealth in society because of

it.

help but think about the unintended consequences of eating corn syrup for the last 40 years.

They've talked about health problems and diabetes and whatever else that comes around from that as opposed to some more pure forms of sugar.

Well this has been a production at the Gorton Institute here at Ottawa University.

I'd like to thank you all for listening.

Five Star Rating helps other people find us, and if you could just forward it along to your family and friends, that would be great.

We have a Gorton Institute Donate button if you'd like to continue to sponsor us.

There's a recording donation or a one-time event.

And other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

Thanks again, guys.

Tell your friends about the podcast, kxel.com slash Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

In the meantime, listen to all the wisdom of Jeff Stein during his weekday news and commentary.

And folks, always remember and never forget to be safe, be smart, be good, be strong.

Love Jesus Christ.

And God blesses everyone.

Till we meet again, have a great weekend and

bye-bye!

Weight Watchers Core Plus.

Get started at WeightWatchers.com.

In a six-month clinical trial of over 370 people, those using Weight Watchers saw significantly better results than those following standard nutritional advice alone.

See the 20-25 study published in the AJCN.