Open Call: Rough Cuts

You didn't vote for Al Gore or John Kerry, so now you, as well as everyone else, will soon be, possibly, economically xxxx. Congrats!

by Chris Metzler + Josh Kurz
http://lab.wgbh.org/open-call/election2008/rough-cuts/voting-schmoting

"I should begin by making a confession.
I don't vote."

Gordon Tullock
One Of The World's Greatest Living Economists

"People think they should vote because they've
been told that in school and there's a large
volume of propaganda at any given point in
time. A great many of them are under delusions as
to the importance of their vote. They think that
their vote makes a lot of difference but as a
matter of fact it doesn't."

Bummer

Voting Schmoting

TCG +00:00:20;05

Every election we hear the same thing.
Your vote counts. You can change the future.

Don't Believe The Hype

Counts

"It's usually said that it's more likely you'll be
killed on the way driving to the polling booth
than your vote will change the outcome."

So, obviously while Gordon Tullock sits at home
avoiding car crashes during national elections, a
hundred and fifteen                 other Americans choose
to do the opposite and cast their ballots. And
since you don't become a world renowned economist
by being an irrational nutcase how does a rational
economist come to this conclusion? Well, let's use
some simple math, a renowned public choice
theorist and this economic model to answer the
question.

Homo Economics

Ri=BiPi+Di-Ci

Gordon Tullock

Let's do it.

There's tons of people out there with different
jobs, ethnicities, personalities and if you want
to make big sweeping statements about why people
make certain choices you have to simplify
things. A lot.

Homo Sapiens

First, forget individual preferences. To make
things easy economists assume we all want one
thing. Happiness. We want as much of it as
possible by expending the least amount of effort.
Then apply this formula to everything we do, even
voting. This is why economists view voters in an
election much like shoppers at a supermarket

Happiness
Effort

Voting
Shopping

"Basically what happens is we assume the voter is
attempting to maximize his preference function."

(Happiness)

That's how you say happiness in econospeak.

"Just as we assume he's attempting to maximize
preference function when he walks into a
store. The only difference is the thing that he
sees is different."

Economists assume that in order for us to figure
out whether something is actually worth doing we
weigh happiness against effort.

Is it worth it?

In other words, whether we're shopping or voting
we're using cost benefit analysis.

What does that mean?

Allright, well, the cost of spending time and
money at the supermarket is worth it because of
the much larger benefit of having food.

Cost Benefit of
Shopping

Cost Benefit of
Voting

That's happy.

So, if we look at voting the same way, the cost of
loosing leisure time by going to the polls and
standing in line is only worth it if the benefits
are greater or at least equal to the cost. So if
you're voting to affect the outcome of an
election, the benefit of voting would be the
amount of difference your vote makes. And this is
crucial for Tullock.

TCG +00:02:28;05

Tullock's argument for not voting relies on a type
of mathematics called division. And it works like
this.

Division

Let's say I go to the supermarket with two buddies
and buy some frozen pizza. We decide to vote on
what kind of pizza to get. Using division you can
see that I hold one third of the voting power.

Your Vote

That's huge. My vote has a big impact on the final
decision In fact, in a tie situation my vote is
the deciding vote. I am a swing voter.

GFX that illustrate division of voting power in both situations

Swing

However if this supermarket worked like an
election things would be different and a whole lot
more crowded. Now it's not just the three of us
deciding on frozen pizza, it's us and everyone
else in our state. That's thousands, maybe even
millions of the people all deciding on
pizza. Let's divide again. In this scenario we see
that my vote is basically insignificant.

"The reason I don't vote is because I know that
there's no likelihood my vote will affect the
outcome because there's so many people voting."

Well, you might say that we're not purchasing
pizza, we're picking a president and that's way
more important. While it's entirely rational to
not vote because of division maybe that's not how
people decide whether or not to vote.

"I think a great many voters just like voting. And
that of course is a benefit, if they feel that
way. As it happens, I don't."

We don't just like voting.

Step 1. using both hands
insert the ballot card all the
way into the Votomatic.

Aren't we upholding democracy?

Insert Card Here
|
v

Aren't we exercising a right
that people have fought and died for?

Aren't we doing something for the greater good?

Besides if everyone thought like Tullock and noone
voted we wouldn't have a democracy.

Place Holes
Over Posts

Que Los Agujeros Sobre Los Po

"Suppose nobody voted. And I respond by saying
that if nobody else voted I would vote. Because I
would be all by myself picking... And the fewer
other people vote the more likely I am to vote."

Really if everyone thought like Tullock then they
would only vote when almost nobody is voting.

GFX that illustrate this chicken/egg paradox

Which means that if nobody's voting then everyone
would think that it's the time to vote. So they
would go out and vote and then there would be too
many people voting and then they wouldn't go vote
which means that there would be enough people to
go voting again. So then there would be too many
and then they'd stop voting.

Voting Schmoting

http://lab.wgbh.org/open-call/election2008/rough-cuts/voting-schmoting
by Chris Metzler + Josh Kurz

Hey Chris and Josh-

I would try the following cut to shorten the film (time codes are approximate); go from 00:52 "how does a rational economist come to this conclusion" right to "02:28 Tullock's argument for not voting...Division." The content in between these two points is fun but doesn't provide vital story points.

Does the majority of the country abstain from voting because they feel that their vote won't affect the outcome? I think its a critical question and love how you develop it using irony. I agree that you should drop the gimmicky burp and move forward with the satirical witty narrative style. If you heighten the absurdity, your commentary becomes more poignant.

Camille, POV

Nancy Bolton
I would not use "nutcase" , a dif. word or phrase.

P.S. - And in regards to audio. All will be cleaned up, as the particularly noisy audio is a shotgun mic, where good lav mic sound available. A faux pax on our part when exporting.

Thanks for the comments folks, as they're helpful and get us thinking about things as we finish it up.

And a quick request. Suggestions that would be particularly helpful would be on how to trim this down, as the current running time is 4:30 minutes and given the guidelines of the Open Call, we're trying to get it as close to 3 minutes as possible.

Lates.

Chris

I think Chico's comments were dead on here. This piece is educational and offers an interesting perspective, but a response outside of that of Tulluck's and the narrator's might be in order.

The graphics and style are fun and make the piece more interesting -- I don't think that you've chosen style over substance as dontbeatool suggested, but you've clearly kept an eye on style. I do think there is space, however, for a bit more substance, that is, at the very least a bit of reaction. I enjoyed the graphics, though, and I think the information was presented clearly in informative and interesting ways.

The audio definitely needs some cleanup. I'd suggest raising the levels on some segments of the interview and using a noise removal filter to hopefully get clearer sound -- at the moment the noisy audio doesn't fit with the disembodied, clean look of the interview.

Overall, good job and I think with a bit more polish this could be a very good piece.

First of all, it seems that you are vastly more interested in style over substance, which I think is silly. If you are devoting so much time to some superficial effects rather than the point at hand, why don't you do just one as best you can and leave the other for another day. If you aren't really interested in the topic and would rather just show off, you are making this into some kind of playground self-attention fest. I really think that would be inappropriate in this context.

errol morris meets mtv. potentially interesting as a timely/educational piece that appeals to a young audience. i'd recommend presenting voter responses... allowing the audience to spend a day in the life of your economist. it's the kind of position piece that requires some counter balance or slice of anticipated indignation.

good luck,
chico

chico colvard
www.c-linefilms.com

I like the pace of the narration, however, unless your target audience is the sesame street crowd I would drop the belch and the SAWINNG.

But one does get the message that Tulluck is a control freak that must be center stage and captain of the team, or he will not play at all.

Really good.
The sound is definitely rough. You might want to add some motion to the talking head shots.

I like it