I haven't made a New Year's resolution in several years (although those did turn out fairly well) but it does seem to be the season for a certain sort of self-skepticism. In that spirit: I recently came across Tyler Cowen's Self-Delusion as the Root of Political Failure, which was quite persuasive. Here is the thesis:

Individuals discard free information when that information damages their self-image and thus lowers their utility. More specifically, individuals prefer to feel good about their previously chosen affiliations and shape their worldviews accordingly. This model helps explain the relative robustness of political failure in light of extensive free information, and it helps to explain the rarity of truth-seeking behavior in political debate.

Just about everyone thinks that their political views are better than the views of smarter or better trained others. On economic issues, few voters defer to the opinions of economists. Nor does this appear to be a well-grounded suspicion of experts. Many citizens are deliberately dismissive, stubborn and irrational. At the same time these individuals maintain a passionate self-righteousness. They are keener to talk than to listen, the opposite of what an information-gathering model would suggest.

I don't know if it comes through in what I write, but I'm a more enthusiastic than average football fan (and no, not European football.) My own team (the Redskins) has been in a semi-constant funk since I was a kid, but I'm enough of a fan of the sport that it doesn't bother me over-much. Anyway, the Denver Broncos were (shockingly) knocked out of the playoffs yesterday when they lost to the relatively weak 49ers. The immediate consequence of that loss is that the Kansas City Chiefs made the playoffs instead. The AP report of the game says the following: "Niners coach Mike Nolan said that if Chiefs coach Herm Edwards gets a bonus for reaching the playoffs, 'I want half of it.'"

So, Nolan was joking, I'm sure, but why not? Let's say you were the owner of the Green Bay Packers on Saturday, and were depending on the Redskins to beat the Giants that night to give you a chance to make the playoffs (which, in reality, the Redskins failed to do, thus entirely ruining my Sunday football watching day by making 4 otherwise exciting games meaningless). The normal NFL thing is to rely on the weaker team's "pride," something which often does carry the day. But couldn't the Packers owner offer a bounty too? Say $50,000 for each Redskins player? Heck, if he wanted to target it, $100,000 to each defensive player would probably have done the trick.

Certainly, it can't be true that football players don't respond to financial incentives. NFL contracts are notoriously incentive laden. Catch this many passes, get this amount of money, and so on. And it would have been worth rather a lot to the Packers owner to help the Giants lose. The Packers were well positioned to make the playoffs should they have been given a chance, since their opponent, the Bears, had little to play for (having already secured the top seed in the NFC bracket themselves) while the value of making the playoffs this year for the Packers was especially high (since the Packers star, Brett Favre, might well retire).

I suspect the answer is that some arcane provision of the NFL rules forbids it, probably to protect owners from ludicrous bidding wars (EDIT: the arcane provision is the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which lists in detail all permissible performance incentives. Needless to say, a get me into the playoffs bounty is not among the listed incentives). I also suspect that in the NFL sub-culture, it might be counterproductive as an isolated case, because the team accepting the money would be embarrassed. But I guess that problem would go away if bounties were more common. And just think how exciting a side story bounties would make on the final day of the season.

Oh, and happy new year!