Buying votes can be a good thing

The single worst feature of democracy is that there are situations when a (sometimes overwhelming) majority of voters will oppose policy changes that are literally good for everyone (in econ jargon, they are Pareto-optimal, i.e. they make some people better off without making anyone worse off). A few months ago I wrote about a specific situation in some Polish public hospitals where it is clear that charging some people for certain surgeries would make everyone better off (and I mean everyone: doctors, hospitals, the government, and the patients, including those patients that would have to pay). And yet virtually every Polish voter and politician would vehemently oppose such change because healthcare is a right and not a commodity and how dare you even think about charging people for services they receive.

But there may be hope. Some efficient policies, while opposed by voters before they were enacted, are accepted and even liked by them after they take effect. In other words, popular opposition to efficient change is not always perpetual. Which brings me to my point: politicians should bribe voters more. In situations where it is clear that popular opposition to an efficient policy will disappear as soon as the policy starts working, politicians do not face long-term risks from advocating it and therefore could offer voters side-payments of some sort in exchange for voting in favor of such policy. It wouldn't cost them much, either; since the policy is efficient, it will generate new revenue, so the bribes can be financed through borrowing against that revenue. Also, the bribe would be a one-shot deal whereas the new revenue stream is forever.

Of course the devil is in the details; it's not at all clear to me how something like that should be done. Fortunately I'm just a blogger, not a policy engineer.

(HT: Economic Logic.)