The Price of Everything

            I generally enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog.  Though a marketing maven, he has a lot to say about quality, treating people right, and other ways to do well and still not do evil.  But his latest post struck me as way off the mark.  Here are some of its key points: (Since I’m annoyed with him, I’m not going to tell you more about him, but he’s easy to find.)

Getting smart about the time tax. If you want to go to Shakespeare in the Park in New York, you need to really want to go.  That's because it's free. Well, mostly free. They use a time-honored tradition to be sure that the tickets are allocated to people who truly want them: they tax the interested by having them wait on line, for hours sometimes.

It seems egalitarian, but it's actually regressive, because it doesn't take into account the fact that different people value their time differently. People with time to spare are far more likely to be rewarded.

We don't need to make people wait in line for anything if we don't want to. Why not have the most eager theater goers trade the three hours they'd spend in line in exchange for tutoring some worthwhile kid instead? Instead of wasting all that time, we could see tens of thousands of people trading the lost time for a ticket and a chance to do something useful. (Money is just one way to adjudicate the time tax problem, but there are plenty of other resources people can trade to get to the head of the line).

This logic of scarcity can be applied to countless situations. First-come, first-served is non-digital, unfair and expensive. And yet we still use it all the time, in just about everyone situation where there is scarcity. 

As a young man, I waited in those lines many times.  (Once I gave up and went to an expensive movie with my date instead – a movie that wound up earning me a $2500 scholarship shortly afterward, but that’s a different story.)  The wait was usually worth it, especially when spent in the company of friends, and we got plenty of vitamin D for our time as well. 

Aside from my own reminiscences, and my gratitude that I had a better chance at a ticket as a high school student than did a broker who couldn’t leave the stock exchange until after four, I still see an enormous amount wrong with Godin’s view.  

First of all, anyone who thinks that we actually use first-come in scarce situations has never watched a sports event, gotten an invitation to a fundraiser with a major performer or public figure, or tried to buy an IPO of a hot stock. Do you think that Spike Lee waits in line for Knicks tickets, that the plasterer on Martha’s Vineyard who didn’t get to see Carol King sing on behalf of the Democratic Party at Martha’s Vineyard for $1500 just didn’t reach Paypal in time, or that your broker slotted you in line ahead of the California pension plan because you put in for Facebook stock minutes ahead of them? In fact there are relatively few times in life when the ability to take time, and the patience to do so, will get you the scarce item.  (And many of those apply to relative equals: students, say, lining up to get into their first course choice.)

Then Godin dazzles us with jargon: waiting in line is “regressive, because it doesn’t take into account the fact that different people value their time differently.”  Waiting on line is a “tax.”  And first-come first served is “non-digital.”  I thought regressive meant the poor paid relatively more than the rich, as in sales taxes, or absolutely more, as in the combination of Social Security and payroll tax as against capital gains.  Waiting would then be progressive: as a high school student without a job, I paid zero to wait on line, while the attorney paid hundreds of dollars.  (That was back in the day, of course.  Today he could be on his phone at his full billable rate, but that would kill Godin’s whole argument.)  Nor, despite the old saw, is time money.  (Remember Jack Benny and the hold-up man?  “Your money or your life.”  “I’m thinking.”)  All of us have a finite amount of time, while some of us have practically unlimited money.  I’m not sure what Godin means by non-digital, except maybe that the Internet has replaced what the Germans call sitzfleisch (ability to stick it out) with internet capacity.  But as far as I know, people are still analog creatures, and will be until the Singularity.

Godin is clearly of the mindset that anything can be “monetized.”  Even his ludicrous effort to show “money is just one way” to deal with the problem proves that.  The hedge fund manager who can’t afford to give up three hours on line would want to, or be qualified to do social service instead?  How much money would have to be spent to find him the “worthwhile kid” to tutor?  Would the kid’s worth be predicated on his future earning power?

No, Mr. Godin, first-come first served isn’t unfair, or it is only in the sense that life is unfair.  Some of us have better looks than others, some are taller, some thinner, some smarter, some better-connected.  Every one of those variations can make unfair differences in life’s opportunities.  Having money is one of the easiest ways to tip the scales in your favor in almost every area of life.  I say hooray for those few places where patience counts for more than payment, and free time is actually worth something to its owner.

On Shaky Ground

            The Trayvon Martin case, for all its ambiguities and its echoes of past white-on-black violence, actually raises a more fundamental question: what kind of society is created by stand your ground laws?  A society both dangerous and strikingly illogical.  Here’s why.

Imagine for a moment the facts are reversed.  George Zimmerman lies dead on the pavement, his skull fractured.  Beside him is a discharged gun.  Trayvon Martin explains to the police that this man started following him, cornered him, and drew a gun.  He overpowered the man, knocked him to the ground, Zimmerman’s gun went off, and he beat Zimmerman’s head on the pavement until Zimmerman lost consciousness and the gun dropped from his hand.  All the rest of the evidence remains the same: Zimmerman’s call to the police, Martin’s to his girlfriend, the distant eye and ear witnesses.

            Setting aside the question of racism, isn’t Martin’s defense exactly the same as Zimmerman’s?  He stood his ground after retreating, he felt his life was in danger, and he reacted with deadly force.  If anything his defense is stronger: he’s not the one who initiated the encounter.  So the trial result, if any, would likely be the same as well: self defense.

            The older self-defense laws, focusing on the ancient English doctrine that a person’s home is his castle, relied on the specifics of the circumstances.  If you are in my house, and I feel threatened, I am the one entitled to defend myself, even with deadly force.  Only a preponderance of evidence – that I was under no actual threat, that I had a motive for assaulting my visitor – can put me at risk.

            But with the stand your ground interpretation, no one has prior standing.  Any two people may feel threatened by the other, either one can respond, and either can kill or maim with impunity. 

            Imagine again a different kind of situation.  Two men get in an argument in a bar.  Each threatens the other.  They “take it outside.”  One is killed.  The other pleads stand your ground.  It seems to be a winner take all situation, and in fact once the fight starts, it’s in the best interest of either party to be sure the other doesn’t survive, so that his (or her) claim of self-defense is less likely to be challenged. As the Old West noted, “Dead men tell no tales.”

            Is this merely hypothetical?  Studies at state universities in Texas and Georgia, both stand your ground states, found that homicide deaths increased sharply in the 23 stand your ground states in the years just after their passage, while they decreased in the other 27 states in the parallel years.  The numbers, 500 to 700 more deaths per year in the stand your ground state, would be shocking if they weren’t buried in the over 30,000 guns deaths in the U.S. annually. 

            The state senator who sponsored Florida's version, says such legislation allows people to do "what they are supposed to do, as a good citizen. They're stopping a violent act.”  Unfortunately, they’re stopping a violent act, which may never have happened, by committing a violent act,.  And as the Trayvon Martin case shows, the good guy is simply the one left alive.

Still Wondering

If people are so worried that Big Brother government is snooping on their every complaint and criticism, why do they spend so much time on social and electronic media calling attention to their rage at Big Brother?

Why is it “inappropriate” for the IRS to examine organizations’ applications for tax exemption, when those organizations publish ten point manifestos, all of which have to do with legislative reforms, including major changes to the tax code?

Why does the ACLU defend the right to privacy, but not when the Newtown parents want to keep the last moments of their children private from the eyes of the media?

Just Wondering

If you’re going to expose your government’s technology spying secrets because you believe the public has the right to decide what that government should and should not be doing to its citizens, why would you seek refuge in China?  Because they’re so scrupulous about not prying into their people’s lives, not stealing information through hacking, and allowing free criticism of the government?  See the Mikado for “The idiot who praises in enthusiastic tone/Every century but this and every country but his own.”

Opening Up or Shutting Down?

            Just when the shock of the Boston Marathon attack was beginning to settle a bit (I was less than two blocks from the infamous boat on the Thursday afternoon), the horror story out of Cleveland again shatters our sense of safety and human decency.  Everyone will make their own moral story out of each event, and I’ve been thinking about mine.

            Of the facts that have come out so far, the description of the homeowner’s way of living struck me most.  He was a man who, according to neighbors, never used his front door, but drove into his back yard, locked the gate, and entered from the rear.  People said he was friendly when outside, but that he never had company and never visited anyone else. 

            What occurred to me was my own childhood in a lower-middle to middle class neighborhood in Queens in the 1950s and 1960s.  There were about ten houses on each side of our street, and I can still recall at least eight of the families on my side, and about half those on the other (there was more movement on the other side, so a few families changed over in my six years before college).  Every family interacted with every other over the backyard fences, on the front lawns, and in each other’s houses.  A few families didn’t have kids, but they were as connected to the rest of the block as all those with school-age children. 

            Before that I lived in a far more urban part of Brooklyn, where three-story and somewhat taller apartments were the norm.  Every day from first through sixth grade I walked 8 blocks to school, often four times a day, since we could go home from lunch.  I was at the outer edge of the school catchment area, and I often heard from my mother that another mom had seen me doing something like wandering up one of the streets between school and home at the end of the day.  My wife lived in suburb of Providence, and recalls how the five-year-olds and up would walk to school, picking up members of their little crew on the way.

            Today we live on a block with 16 houses.  We have exactly one friend on the block (two others moved away), and perhaps two others with whom we have a cordial acquaintance.  The rest are total strangers to us, and I think, to each other.

            Beyond anecdotes, numerous studies report that parents are far more fearful for their children’s safety than at any time in the past.  The distance even older children are allowed to travel unsupervised has shrunk from miles to backyards.  Yet there is no evidence that events like that in Cleveland are any more common than in the past.

            The problem, it seems to me, is twofold.  First, we know about every incident immediately, no matter where it happens.  That means we have a collection of frightening events that covers at least all 300+ million Americans, plus occasional major abominations abroad.  But one evolutionary biologist has suggested that we take in these events as if they had occurred in the small, local social unit that was what our ancestors knew: a hundred people or somewhat more.  So our calculation of odds is inevitably warped. (I know one person who is fanatical about locking the back door to her well-fenced yard in a very safe neighborhood.  Why: because she can list three home invasions leading to murder that appeared on the local news: one in Massachusetts, one in Connecticut, and one in New Hampshire over a period of six years.)

            But the paradox is that the more we shut down in order to feel safe, the less safe we are.  On my current block there are no block parties, the yards are larger and farther apart, and most people spend their time indoors.  Everyone has a garage, so no one comes home, parks on the street, and chats with another neighbor arriving at the same time.  In fact, 15 of the 16 homes on my street have attached garages, so hidden movement between car and house would be even easier than in Cleveland (the 16^th had a garage but converted in into added living space).

            So we follow the reverse strategy of what many living creatures have developed to protect themselves against predators.  Instead of flocking together, watching out for the whole herd, or circling around the young, we do exactly what predators hope for: we carve ourselves out from the herd and so have no one but ourselves around when the predator comes stalking.  And we put our faith in security cameras, while complaining that these are an invasion of privacy when put up by government to protect us, but not when installed by businesses to protect themselves.  (And even though they helped capture the perpetrators in Boston, they aren’t very good at the “See Something, Say Something” model, except in tightly monitored circumstances.) No wonder a frightening number of us want assault rifles by our bedsides. 

The Happiest Day, or April Fool?

            Having just watched a piece on “Good Morning America” in which a reporter conversed with a gorilla to demonstrate a major scientific breakthrough, I was primed for more April Fool’s fun.  So when the Harvard Business Review Daily Statistic sent me an article purporting to be by scholars in Germany and the U.S., I thought our collective legs were being pulled by that usually fairly humorless institution.   Here’s why.  The breakdown of this 16-hour happiest day was:

106 Minutes a day of “intimate relations”

82    Socializing

78    Relaxing

75    Eating

73    Praying or meditating

68    Exercising

57    Talking on the phone

56    Shopping

55    TV

50    Preparing food

48    Computer

47    Housework

46    Napping

46    Caring for children

36    Work

33    Commuting

But if it’s a joke, Harvard either created a fake web site for the renowned Elsevier publishers, or had them put up a hoax dated February 13.

            I can happily accept the rough validity of some of these allocations: Socializing, Eating, Praying, Exercising, and Napping all seem to me pretty much on target.  But then it gets dicier.  Who can spend 106 minutes a day in “intimate relations”?  As the old joke goes:

       Preacher: Do you want to suffer in hell for an hour of carnal pleasure?

       Congregant: How do you make it last an hour?

I guess the reason you have to spend 78 minutes relaxing and 46 napping because of the intimate relations, since otherwise you have only about 5 hours of activities that you need to rest from, (and over 4 like socializing and talking on the phone or watching TV, that seem pretty relaxing).  And who wants to spend even 33 minutes commuting, or 47 in housework? 

And what do the academics mean by “Work”?  On the one hand, that isn’t enough work to buy most of us a computer, a TV, food, a couch for napping, a bed for intimate relations, a means of commuting, or much else for ourselves or the children.  Without those things, how many happy days would you have?  On the other, if you enjoy your work, is 36 minutes enough? 

Of course, it’s hard to argue with researchers who provide tables with “Comparison of 5 day schedules: calculated schedules based on log, squared, and hedonic utility functions, linear (assuming no utility decrease from activities), and actual schedule.”  But that’s only because it’s hard to understand them.

Aside from the specific quibbles, there’s the whole “one size fits all” form.  At what age?  Rich, retired, or in the midst of a working life? What interests?  What aversions?  What temperament? And what about the missing categories? 

My added categories would be Reading, Listening to Music, Being in Nature.  I would enjoy the full complement of 6 to 7 hours a day interacting with others, at least some of the time, but many would like much more alone time, some even more interaction. (Of course many can be combined, like being in nature, exercising, and socializing.)

My suggestion: start with a new category: My Favorite Activities. Allocate ideal time to them.  (Maybe 120 minutes reading, 30 just listening to music, and 90 in nature, for me.)  Then take the rest, drop any that are simply necessities, and calculate your ideal day off.  Then do a second plan for a work day, calculating how long you’d like to work at the job you have now, and parcel out the rest for what the church calls “ordinary days.”  Finally, add a third: ultimate reward days, that might include devoting almost all your waking hours to one activity, minus the necessities like eating or, if necessary resting or napping.  Maybe yours is a multi-day wilderness trip, or a visit to a world-class city to drink wine, shop, and take in the sights, or just a full day fishing, sailing, painting, or whatever.  Then plan your year to allow you at least 100 days of time off and about 10-20 of ultimate reward.

            Give it a try and let me know what you find.

Too Rich? Not Thin Enough?

Two apparently disparate issues in the news caught my eye recently.  Here in Massachusetts, unprecedented beach erosion is causing homes, many of them quite expensive, to tumble into the sea or come perilously close to doing so.  Just across the border, Rhode Island’s CVS Pharmacies have announced that overweight employees will have to pay $50 a month more for their health insurance.  Both events have caused outcries from those affected.  The homeowners want to be allowed to protect their homes by seawalls or any other means they can afford, and employees and other advocates are angry at CVS’s intrusion into their personal lives.

            Very different issues it seems: in one case, the government is preventing people from doing something costly that they want to do; in the other a business is requiring employees to pay unless they take an action.

            But both in some ways amount to the same thing: the belief that individual rights always trump those of the group.  Both ideas are very popular in the U.S., but both have serious limitations that often go unacknowledged.

            In the case of homeowners, it might be useful to apply the “right to swing my fist ends at my neighbor’s nose” principle.  There are many things I can’t do with my property because they affect my neighbor adversely: raise roosters or pigs in a crowded suburb, put up a windmill that is overly loud around his house, perhaps let trees grow so they block the view that made his house desirable, etc.  Since seawalls shift water’s action, they can easily cause greater erosion in their near neighborhood.  So the homeowner who has the funds to protect his property may be hastening the loss of his neighbor’s. 

One solution is the “no man is an island” model.  If you do indeed own an island, maybe you can protect it by a 360-degree seawall. Otherwise, you and all your neighbors will have to bear the mutual risks of nature, not additional risks imposed by one another.  There is an adage, after all, “Oceanfront property is God’s way of telling you you have too much money.”

            As for health insurance, the case is actually simpler.  If you want your employer to pay for your health insurance, as we unfortunately have decided to do in America, can your employer expect responsible action from you to hold down costs? Take the analogy of expense accounts.  A company may provide expense accounts, but put numerous restrictions on their use: caps on meals, travel rules, overnight stays, etc. If you buy life insurance, the company may restrict dangerous activities for which it will not pay.  Sports teams likewise place contract restrictions on physically hazardous activities of their players. If your habits raise the cost of health insurance for the whole company, should you be exempt from paying for those habits? 

            Certainly there’s a slippery slope argument.  But where both the health risks and the costs to society of smoking and obesity are so well documented and the prevalence of the activities is so widespread, selecting these and only these for intervention makes sense, while, say, charging anyone who skydives or bungee jumps has minimal payoff for society as a whole.

            The best reason for intervening is that its opposite is socially unthinkable.  No one, I imagine, is ready to say “If you smoke or are obese we won’t give you care for the subsequent illnesses.”  (There’s an interesting analogy: nine states so far bill people for the costs of being rescued, say from mountaineering. Is that different from billing people ahead of time for the insurance coverage they will statistically need because of their risky behavior?)

            I do see one error in CVS’s approach.  As it has been designed, it’s an individual punishment, or at least that’s what it feels like.  Why not reverse it?  All employees will pay $600 a year more for their health insurance.  But if you weigh in and are less than 10% over an accepted weight, you get the $600 back.  Anyone who doesn’t want to be intruded on just pays the $600.  (Thanks to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge for alerting me to the benefits of this kind of approach.)