I, Sandwich

Well, almost I, Sandwich. Pay attention to all the capital used, from the stoves, to the boat, to the farms, to the plastic jugs, piped gas, &c &c &c. But even with all that, making a humble sandwich from (almost) scratch should lend an appreciation for the BATNA to market exchange, a BATNA that folks in, eg, Venezuela are obliged to accept.

Sweet Green Icing

Kids, remember not to leave your cake out in the rain. And by "cake" I mean berries growing on bushes in Maryland county and municipal parks. You might just earn yourself a $50 fine.

ATSRTWT

Foraging seems like it should be euvoluntary. I can understand using fines and punishments to protect something like a community garden, where people have mixed their labor with the natural endowments of the earth, thereby asserting property rights over the produce. But naturally-occurring berries and mushrooms and the like aren't owned.

Of course, some sorts of forage can be destructive. When I lived in the Ashford/Mt Rainier area of Washington, it wasn't uncommon in the early summer months to see folks out with big ol' baskets by the side of the road a-pickin' and a-packin' the sundry bounty of the evergreen forests of the Emerald State. Most of what they were after were ingredients that were common in their home countries but which are largely unavailable for purchase in US supermarkets. Things like fern fronds, exotic varieties of mushroom, roots, and young leaves seemed to be their primary quarry. This sort of forage can destroy patches of the ecosystem thanks to the logic of an unregulated commons. Maryland legislators, perhaps wary of disastrous outcomes, passed appropriate legislation and hey-presto! Problem solved, right?

Of course, cops are trained to fight crime, not to interpret the nuance of legislative intent. The purpose of plant protection law is to protect plants, not to harass someone harmlessly collecting a handful of berries.

Of course, it could be worse. A half a c-note fine is petty compared to a guy my wife knew in Washington who got deported (to Korea, iirc) for exceeding a razor clam harvest limit. Deported.

Apologies to Nathan Burney, but the power of the state is a big ol' dumb hammer. Be very careful what you swing it at.

Obligatory:

Home Economics Vol 1: Telescopic Morality and Peas

Raise your hands if you were ever told something like "clean your plate because there are starving kids in Africa." Keep them up if you've ever uttered the sentiment. I'd wager that if the readership here is a random selection from the population along this particular issue's dimensions, better than half of you will still have your hands up.

Assuming you're parents of course.

It isn't, after all, something you'd say to a dinner companion or to a stranger in an airport restaurant. It's specifically an injunction you make to your children. It has the overtones of being what my great pal Adam Gurri dismisses as telescopic morality, but only rhetorically. Every child who hears it almost immediately summons the obvious comeback: "if you're so worried about hungry African kids, then mail them my chicken in aspic." Children are sensitive enough to be offended when the suffering of others is deployed as a morality prop.

From the parents' perspective, we want our children to be properly nourished and to have a well-developed palate. Man does not live on peanut butter and jelly alone. Cajoling and bribery doesn't always work, but guilt can sometimes be effective. Still, there's the guilt of "you're breaking your nana's heart; you know she has a weak heart" and then there's accidentally training your children to think of destitute populations as inferiors with no agency of their own.

Part of the Mother's Problem is menu planning. The economics of the household involves a great deal of detailed private information of who eats what, whose tastes are changing because she's eleven now and she doesn't eat kids' cereal anymore, who's decided to go HARDxXxCORE VEGAN because factory farming is an orgy of cruelty, and who needs a little extra fiber in his diet because the cholesterol numbers from the last physical were alarming to say the least. This is no secret to anyone in the house. Indeed, quite a bit of talk at home is split between affirmations of affection (good or bad) and nutrition (again, good or bad). So to associate the nitty-gritty decisions made in front of the hearth with the thorny institutional problems of global poverty is an error of rhetoric that eventually, if not immediately contributes to the injustices of international paternalism.

By all means, get your kids to eat their peas (and if you're a kid, do your suffering mother a favor and eat your peas), but please reconsider using the suffering of others as a crowbar to pry open recalcitrant jaws. A better, more just world will include the children of poor countries having better access to trade opportunities. Training another generation to think of the destitute as little more than charity cases is a lousy way to improve political and economic institutions.

Rules vs Discretion (again)

For your viewing pleasure:


Police don't make the laws. Legislators do, at the request of constituents. Constituents therefore bear responsibility for the thuggish displays that arise as a direct consequence of their petitions for redress of injury.

A pair of little girls selling lemonade should occupy the top tier of what can rightly be considered euvoluntary exchange. The relentless quest for prior restraint cannot.

I'm Only Happy When It Rains

As much as I adore the Emerald City and the bluest skies I've ever seen, Seattle sure is First Among Nations when it comes to petty meddling in constituents' affairs.

From NPR via Mrs. JR, Seattle garbage cops will rifle through your curbside rubbish and fine you for not... get this... composting.

It would be tedious of me to review the economic difference between a resource and waste, so I won't. But I will ask what moral intuition prompts this sort of thing. Am I missing some sort of uncompensated externality here? You pay sanitation services to haul off your refuse. So long as it's not something that will release harmful contaminants into the countryside or damage the landfill liner, how is it a concern of the state or your neighbors what you define as rubbish? If your compost is valuable to your neighbors, why haven't they paid you to take it off your hands?

Maybe there's a market opportunity there. Uber, but for used coffee grounds.

Waiting in Line So Rich Folks Don't Have To: A Job, or Exploitation?

Craig Newmark cites this example of non-price rationing.

I did chuckle at the description of the "high level analytics" that those young folks were using to figure out how much they were getting paid.

But, some questions:

1.  Is the bakery being smart, or dumb, by making so few tasties?

2.  Given your answer to the above, shouldn't they at least CHARGE MORE, rather than let so much of the rent be dissipated in waiting in line?

3.  But if they did charge more, who would be harmed?  Assume that the price now paid for the tasty by the rich person is fixed.  The rent is simply the difference between the retail price ($5) and the resales price ($50).  So, you get $45 x 2 (2 per customer)  or $90 rent for standing in line.  It seems to be worth about 2 hours of slacker time (they'd just be sleeping, or ironically pretending to be pretending to be pretending to be sleeping).  If the bakery raised the price to $15 each, would people buy fewer?  If the $50 price at resale is fixed, it looks like all that would happen is that the wait times would go down.

Therefore, the socially responsible thing for the bakery to do would be to RAISE PRICES!  Then, the kids would only have to wait in line 95 minutes (say).  They would get $35 x 2 rent for waiting, about the same hourly rate.  But there would be less deadweight loss.

Those bastards!  They won't do the socially responsible thing and raise their prices!