I've had similar thoughts about my transit agency's and electricity provider's proposal to set fares/ based on time of use to incentivize off peak use. As someone with technocratic tendencies, I get it, but I really don't want to be forced into the tense internal debate between saving some money or rescheduling my day or waiting for a bus. There's a continuum of comfort with this stuff I guess, where that's my line, while decoupled carry-on bags (which doesn't bother me) might be too much for someone else.
I have to say as someone who is left-leaning, when I read you I have no idea why you identify as conservative. You come to many of the same diagnoses and potential solutions that those of us on the other side of the aisle have.
I have So Many Thoughts on this, but I'm traveling and typing from my phone so apologies if this is hard to follow:
I think much of this comes down to the fact that there are several complex dynamics at play, which intersects with the typical human perspective that tends to assume the family is "normal" or even "neutral" so any shift to that often feels bad in ways that a hypothetical outside observer wouldn't understand.
For one, to make the obligatory Wendell Berry connection, there's definitely a sense where the modern scale of technology and economics operate at a "non-humane" manner that worries about aggregates and averages because it simply can't operate on a per-individual level. I work in tech, and the amount of problems we tolerate just because moving from 99.99% success to 100% is prohibitively expensive and the massive competitive disadvantage you'd be at for trying to do it would drive you out of business to a competitor who didn't have the same perfectionist tendencies.
But I think some of this also runs into a deeper issue: a fundamental ethos baked deep in the heart of American culture is to take everything you can and try to push the cost off onto others. Tragedy of the commons, but it goes much deeper than that. Like take driving: the car has *always* knowingly been a tool to benefit the user while sticking most of the costs on others. The issue is that we kept scaling that to the point that it becomes a much greater problem in aggregate, but also that it's become more foundational to society so any criticism feels more personal.
I don't even think that this sort of individualism is entirely bad, but I do think we should be aware of it. Like take the fast food example: the purpose of the deal is to entice people to come during the times they're not at capacity, helping make their business more predictable and sustainable. While the bad feelings related to it are understandable, can you really frame them in any way other than a sense of individual entitlement? You're right that the economic "rational actor" view is missing something fundamentally human, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that the "true" humanity is not just some romantic je ne sais quoi but a bundle of emotional threads, many of which we should not be excited about (I believe you and I would call them "sin")
To get back to Berry, I think his critique holds a lot of water: the old ways *did* better respect the individual humanity *of some people* within interactions than much of modernity. But that's also a mixed bag, and many of the changes reflect both an attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of The Old Ways, combined with attempts to better adapt to changing realities of the day (Baumol effect being a big one that I really don't think many of us truly reckon with in terms of our intuitions).
But all of that said, I do think that there's real merit to criticizing the dehumanizing aspects of these modern systems *especially as them impact those working within them*, and I try to focus on this rather than just Me As Individual Consumer. Like it sucks when I can't get anyone at my insurance to actually engage with the fact that I'm pretty sure they've made a mistake and I'm being charged hundreds of dollars for it. But also, like the whole model where the person on the other end is just forced to read a script with no actual power to help who still has to face all the emotion from folks like me while the people responsible for the problem and with the power to address it are completely insulated (unless I actually get pissed enough to escalate to bring in government regulators) is a problem, and I'm sure there's a sense in which a lot of the Good Things we have don't "work" without this kind of stocastic garbage. Probably worth rereading Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas again....
I recently reread the biblical command against having unfair weights (i.e. one light and one heavy, depending on how you want to subtly and secretly twist a trade to your own advantage in a marketplace interaction). I wonder if some of these things you discuss would fall into that category of unfairness. In other words, don’t secretly manipulate an interaction in order to increase your profit, even if the other person can afford it. Be up front from the start.
I know this isn’t what the article is strictly about, especially since this particular ‘rule’ that I have a pet peeve about is pretty old. But I absolutely hate how hard it is to find lunch menu items before 11:00 am.
I often go on day trips on the weekends to ride my bike. The whole process of getting to the trailhead is an always a struggle. I hate mornings and waking up, I’m pretty likely to forget things, and for one reason or another it always takes twice as long to arrive as it should. So usually I don’t manage to get on the bike until like 1:00 pm.
One of the things that would make mornings and travel like this more bearable is if I could get a goddamn American hamburger from a decent chain as I’m leaving. But all the best chains either don’t open until 10:30 or 11, or don’t serve lunch until then. Even when you do show up just as they open/start serving, they are uniformly unready and it takes forever. This even happens at In-n-Out and Five Guys!
And then most of my trips have pretty big dead zones with no real towns for 20-30 minutes of driving. So I’ll leave the last town at like 10:20, and then when I get to the next town closer to where I’m going, I’m only like 45 minutes away and won’t have digested by the time I get on the bike. It’s really a significant source of distress.
I dislike American breakfast food in general and much more so from chain restaurants. The fact that the only places that cater to people such as myself are the garbage chains like Carls Jr, Jack in the Box, and Burger King infuriates me.
As I said initially, this is not a new phenomenon. But it is getting worse in some ways. Lots of McDonald’s don’t serve lunch until 11, where it used to be uniformly 10:30.
On the Oxford traffic restrictions, how are they different from residential parking restrictions, which often completely ban non-resident parking, you don't even get a certain number of uses.
The answer is we could, but do we want to? Is the relaxation of competitive pressure on certain import competing activities worth the higher prices to consumers of those items and lower profits of exporters (I hope your instructor covered that aspect of import restrictions, known as the Lerner Theorem)?
As for dynamic pricing, I agree that the benefits do not seem large in airline tickets (but maybe more so in fast food outlets) but the item that truly need to be priced (time of day is good enough, not full dynamically) is parking. I'm persuaded that much of the resistance to denser more walkable urban areas is the provision of an uncharged parking "commons" whihc incumbents then fight to preserve. Better to give incumbents a portion of the revenue so that if development leads to more demand for parking space they will benefit.
I've had similar thoughts about my transit agency's and electricity provider's proposal to set fares/ based on time of use to incentivize off peak use. As someone with technocratic tendencies, I get it, but I really don't want to be forced into the tense internal debate between saving some money or rescheduling my day or waiting for a bus. There's a continuum of comfort with this stuff I guess, where that's my line, while decoupled carry-on bags (which doesn't bother me) might be too much for someone else.
I have to say as someone who is left-leaning, when I read you I have no idea why you identify as conservative. You come to many of the same diagnoses and potential solutions that those of us on the other side of the aisle have.
I have So Many Thoughts on this, but I'm traveling and typing from my phone so apologies if this is hard to follow:
I think much of this comes down to the fact that there are several complex dynamics at play, which intersects with the typical human perspective that tends to assume the family is "normal" or even "neutral" so any shift to that often feels bad in ways that a hypothetical outside observer wouldn't understand.
For one, to make the obligatory Wendell Berry connection, there's definitely a sense where the modern scale of technology and economics operate at a "non-humane" manner that worries about aggregates and averages because it simply can't operate on a per-individual level. I work in tech, and the amount of problems we tolerate just because moving from 99.99% success to 100% is prohibitively expensive and the massive competitive disadvantage you'd be at for trying to do it would drive you out of business to a competitor who didn't have the same perfectionist tendencies.
But I think some of this also runs into a deeper issue: a fundamental ethos baked deep in the heart of American culture is to take everything you can and try to push the cost off onto others. Tragedy of the commons, but it goes much deeper than that. Like take driving: the car has *always* knowingly been a tool to benefit the user while sticking most of the costs on others. The issue is that we kept scaling that to the point that it becomes a much greater problem in aggregate, but also that it's become more foundational to society so any criticism feels more personal.
I don't even think that this sort of individualism is entirely bad, but I do think we should be aware of it. Like take the fast food example: the purpose of the deal is to entice people to come during the times they're not at capacity, helping make their business more predictable and sustainable. While the bad feelings related to it are understandable, can you really frame them in any way other than a sense of individual entitlement? You're right that the economic "rational actor" view is missing something fundamentally human, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that the "true" humanity is not just some romantic je ne sais quoi but a bundle of emotional threads, many of which we should not be excited about (I believe you and I would call them "sin")
To get back to Berry, I think his critique holds a lot of water: the old ways *did* better respect the individual humanity *of some people* within interactions than much of modernity. But that's also a mixed bag, and many of the changes reflect both an attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of The Old Ways, combined with attempts to better adapt to changing realities of the day (Baumol effect being a big one that I really don't think many of us truly reckon with in terms of our intuitions).
But all of that said, I do think that there's real merit to criticizing the dehumanizing aspects of these modern systems *especially as them impact those working within them*, and I try to focus on this rather than just Me As Individual Consumer. Like it sucks when I can't get anyone at my insurance to actually engage with the fact that I'm pretty sure they've made a mistake and I'm being charged hundreds of dollars for it. But also, like the whole model where the person on the other end is just forced to read a script with no actual power to help who still has to face all the emotion from folks like me while the people responsible for the problem and with the power to address it are completely insulated (unless I actually get pissed enough to escalate to bring in government regulators) is a problem, and I'm sure there's a sense in which a lot of the Good Things we have don't "work" without this kind of stocastic garbage. Probably worth rereading Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas again....
I recently reread the biblical command against having unfair weights (i.e. one light and one heavy, depending on how you want to subtly and secretly twist a trade to your own advantage in a marketplace interaction). I wonder if some of these things you discuss would fall into that category of unfairness. In other words, don’t secretly manipulate an interaction in order to increase your profit, even if the other person can afford it. Be up front from the start.
Thoughts?
I know this isn’t what the article is strictly about, especially since this particular ‘rule’ that I have a pet peeve about is pretty old. But I absolutely hate how hard it is to find lunch menu items before 11:00 am.
I often go on day trips on the weekends to ride my bike. The whole process of getting to the trailhead is an always a struggle. I hate mornings and waking up, I’m pretty likely to forget things, and for one reason or another it always takes twice as long to arrive as it should. So usually I don’t manage to get on the bike until like 1:00 pm.
One of the things that would make mornings and travel like this more bearable is if I could get a goddamn American hamburger from a decent chain as I’m leaving. But all the best chains either don’t open until 10:30 or 11, or don’t serve lunch until then. Even when you do show up just as they open/start serving, they are uniformly unready and it takes forever. This even happens at In-n-Out and Five Guys!
And then most of my trips have pretty big dead zones with no real towns for 20-30 minutes of driving. So I’ll leave the last town at like 10:20, and then when I get to the next town closer to where I’m going, I’m only like 45 minutes away and won’t have digested by the time I get on the bike. It’s really a significant source of distress.
I dislike American breakfast food in general and much more so from chain restaurants. The fact that the only places that cater to people such as myself are the garbage chains like Carls Jr, Jack in the Box, and Burger King infuriates me.
As I said initially, this is not a new phenomenon. But it is getting worse in some ways. Lots of McDonald’s don’t serve lunch until 11, where it used to be uniformly 10:30.
On the Oxford traffic restrictions, how are they different from residential parking restrictions, which often completely ban non-resident parking, you don't even get a certain number of uses.
In one class, I asked ...
The answer is we could, but do we want to? Is the relaxation of competitive pressure on certain import competing activities worth the higher prices to consumers of those items and lower profits of exporters (I hope your instructor covered that aspect of import restrictions, known as the Lerner Theorem)?
As for dynamic pricing, I agree that the benefits do not seem large in airline tickets (but maybe more so in fast food outlets) but the item that truly need to be priced (time of day is good enough, not full dynamically) is parking. I'm persuaded that much of the resistance to denser more walkable urban areas is the provision of an uncharged parking "commons" whihc incumbents then fight to preserve. Better to give incumbents a portion of the revenue so that if development leads to more demand for parking space they will benefit.