Knowledge is a free good. The biggest cost in its transmission is not in the production or distribution of knowledge, but in its assimilation. This is something that all teachers know.
Kenneth ArrowThe Germans, for example, have some kind of compromise between single-member and broader districts. In Israel, you have nothing, you have only a national election. You have no local districts at all. And that's because of the idea that in addition to other ideological differences, locality matters. The question is does the congressman represent his district and the interests of his district? And as I said there's quite a variety of systems the democratic world. The implications need to be examined.
Kenneth ArrowThere are all sorts of institutions in the economic world which depart from the simple price/market model which I worked on in an earlier incarnation and which has been sort of the mainstream of economic theories since Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There are all sorts of contractual relations between firms and individuals which do not conform to the simple price theory - profit-sharing schemes and so forth - and the explanation for these suddenly became clear. We now understand why these emerged and that they are based on differences in information in the economy.
Kenneth ArrowFamily is a difficult matter. I must admit I do not know that the state can intervene successfully in a family. It's a fact that everything is connected with the individualist temperament, the kind of economic environment which stresses the individual, but this is not directly the result of a state policy, nor do I see any good way by which the state could intervene except in some marginal ways.
Kenneth ArrowThere's only one problem that bothers me. And that's something my theorem [ of Impossibility] really doesn't cover. In my theorem I was assuming people vote sincerely. The trouble with methods where you have three or four classes, I think if people vote sincerely they may well be very satisfactory. The problem is the incentive to misrepresent your vote may be high.
Kenneth Arrow