A conflict between externalities and libertarianism

At the University of Victoria, my alma mater, there are no fraternities or sororities. Last week, students voted to keep things that way.

I like to think of myself as a libertarian. I have no interest in joining a frat myself, but if someone else wants to join one, I wouldn't want to stop him or her. One of my friends was in a fraternity at another university, and the beer-drinking, crazy party stereotypes are a little overblown; they do some good charity work.

So when one of my left-leaning Facebook friends, Shamus Reid, posted on Facebook in support of the ban ("Today, 64.5% of UVic students voted at their students' union's AGM to oppose frats and sororities on campus. I'm proud to own 42.5% of a degree from that fine institution."), I set out writing a snide retort on his wall accusing him of paternalism. It irked me that Shamus sees it as a good thing that UVic is preventing people who want to join a frat or sorority from doing so, just because some students don't like the idea. If you don't like frats, don't join one, I thought, but don't stop someone else from signing up if they want to.

Faulty political incentives

A storm is brewing at my alma mater, where student union politicians may override the decision of an electoral officer and boot two candidates who won election to next year's board of directors.

The prospect of partisan politicians disqualifying another party's politicians is creating quite a controversy, and rightly so. But it shouldn't be a big surprise, given the rules in place for dealing with electoral complaints:

What I've been up to

I've been very busy with school in recent weeks, but have been doing a little writing on the side. Here's some stuff I've done lately:

- My take on the single transferrable vote proposal put forward in British Columbia was published in the Canadian Student Review's Winter 2009 edition.

- I've been covering the Hamilton Bulldogs, including a profile of their coach Guy Boucher (also in French), and the team's recent home games against the Toronto Marlies and Abbotsford Heat.

STV too complicated for strategic voting

Single transferrable vote (or STV for short) is too complicated for people to figure out how to vote strategically under, a paper by an economist at the University of Montreal and three French economists suggests.

The voting system puts multiple seats in a single riding and has voters rank their candidates in order of preference, with portions of each vote getting transferred between candidates. It was soundly defeated for the second time by B.C. voters in the 2009 election.

One of the arguments proponents of STV used was that it eliminates any incentive for strategic voting -- that is, there is no reason for people to vote for a candidate other than the one they truly want to win. But game theory shows people can still get better outcomes by voting strategically with STV.