(Getting fed up with the so called biggest feast for a democratic country, I tried to contribute something to society by sending this article to a newspapers, but, unfortunately, the editor has left the newspapers so my article was too late to heed so that it didn't get published, too bad, indeed. It's okay. Just see and give your comments please)
Preparing for the upcoming legislative election on april 9th, every single ‘caleg’ has spent billions on ludicrous posters and banners to deserve one honored seat. Their becoming generous on this generates ambiguous effect. For entrepreneurs on posters and alike, this election is like a drop of water amidst dire economic downturns, whereas for laymen this is a kind of silly jokes. As an advertisement suggests along with economic theory: the more choices you have, the happier you are, but when the choices are off the limit, the less happy you are, indeed.
We are now facing the most perplexing days ahead until the day of election coming. We find people presumably trying to contribute something significant. Nevertheless, what can you expect from persons we don’t know promoting themselves with nothing as they promise but showing photos of celebrities, superheroes or even foreign statesmen? This article is trying to give a vignette of the situation of political competition nowadays and to give a little trick on how to choose the right person without even knowing their true personalities. The thrust of this article is not to sway you to vote ‘golput’. It’s up to the readers. I will only give some current situation, simple theory embedded on it, and how theory can guide you to the right choice.
First, I suppose that this current political atmosphere is somewhat similar to the case of used cars in the second-hand markets. The sellers try to conceal their cars’ qualities by showing up noticeable features, like colorful paintings, attractive accessories, newly decorated seats, while the machine is inferior. It’s similar to what ‘calegs’ do by now. They try to conceal their competence by showing either eye-catching sentences or pictures so that people can remember their names. For example, some ‘caleg’ tries to accentuate the fact he is a father of a famous singer, some person is proud of having a face looks like a front man of a band, while some feels profoundly happy with him faking taking pictures with Barrack Obama. Unfortunately, due to limited space, I can’t tell one by one of descriptions of how funny our ‘calegs’ are.
Second, a simple economic theory somehow provides a little trick so that we are able to pick the right one, assuming we are not into ‘golput’ societies. This simple theory called ‘lemon’s problem’ is drawn from a famous work of of 2001 nobel prize winner in economics George Akerlof. A simple explanation would be like this. Lemon’s problem is a problem that prevails when buyers can’t figure real quality of the cars they are going to buy, and thus buy the lemon (bad quality) ones instead of mint (good quality) ones, because dealers have more information than that of the buyers’.
According to Akerlof, dealers in second-hand markets are confined to limited quality cars because owners of moderate-quality cars who want to sell their cars due to high cost maintenance would rethink about it for their utilities for keeping their cars exceeding their utilities coming from selling with prices dropping significantly. Hence, cars left to be sold are the worst quality whose former owners’ utilities are at highest if they sell it because their cars have severe problems. If buyers are lucky enough, they may still find moderate quality ones in the show room as there are persons who desperately need money that they are willing to sell their cars.
The key word here: asymmetric information. At first the dealers don’t know the true qualities of cars offered to them until they pass it on to buyers who feel the same way with dealers at the first time. Feeling emphatic? You should be since it is akin to us facing legislative election coming in weeks, yes? However, the theory tells that we face unintended consequences: bad products drive out good products. Competent people don’t feel like plunging themselves into this feast assuming Indonesia’s political reign is full of deceptions and betrayals. I just want to say that not many good choices left. Indeed, it’s hardly.
The question now: what is the promised trick? It’s very simple in understanding yet difficult in practice. As explained above, ludicrous posters, banners and any media ‘caleg’ use imply lack of confidence of their own capabilities. We can therefore use the reverse logic. Choose the ones using proper promotions containing neither funny sentences nor pictures. It shows their confidence and capabilities. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple in practice. After narrowing down our choices to several people there is another additional homework to do: we need to do a little research on them. We need to heed their track records. There is no guarantee they don’t understand this theory. Just think for the best, prepare for the worst. Happy vote!
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