BEING EFFICIENT AND/OR MORAL?

Here’s an unpleasant memory for most:  the last time standing on a long line waiting to be served or allowed to pass some obstacle.  While waiting, does one think he/she is engaged in a moral challenge?  According to Michael J. Sandel,[1] there is a morality angle to one’s discomfort. 

          What lines?  It seems like modern life is offering up more and more of them.  Of course, there are traffic lines, lines at the TSA security setups at the airport, lines at cafeteria dining facilities, lines at the supermarket, sometimes lines to place your order at fast-food outlets, etc.  Sandel reports that such lines, according to economists, are examples of market failures.  They are inefficient – people on those lines are wasting time and, if the line finds a person in a car, for example, there is the waste of gas, clean air, engine proficiency, and the like.

          In short, this inefficiency, in its various forms, is simply a market not functioning as it should.  What is happening is that to eliminate the lines one only needs to up the price of whatever people are waiting for, be it a hamburger or being “inspected” at a TSA line.  Actually, this latter case demonstrates how this type of inefficiency can be minimized.

          In this approach, TSA with the cooperation of the airlines has instituted a way to allow certain passengers to be pre-cleared allowing these passengers to, in effect, jump the line (some call it the “TSA pre-line”).  Economically, the effective element of this strategy is that those who are willing to pay for this pre-clearance are given this preferred treatment. 

More generally, the existence of lines can be eliminated or minimized if a pricing mechanism is set up so that those who value not standing in a line can pay to avoid that line.  This also helps non-payers since, by eliminating the payers, there are less people on line.  But are there problems with this approach?  And if so, is there a moral angle to those problems?

One problem is that the TSA is a government agency providing a governmental service.  As such, all citizens and through legal extension all legal residents have a right to equal treatment.  After all, the service is payed by everyone’s tax money and the Constitution guarantees equal treatment.  So, any process that treats some in a preferred way, even if the paying process by which the preference is determined is open to all, is questionable.  The law or process should not advantage some over others.  At least not in the opinion of this writer – but he is not a constitutional lawyer.

Another problem is that if this type of approach in handling lines is generally instituted, as is the want of some policy-makers, a moral concern does arise.  It takes one away from a moral perspective of “first come, first served” sensibility to one that holds “he/she, who will pay, pays to avoid the line.”  Or, as most scarce goods and services are rationed, that rationing would now rely on a price mechanism, not a timing mechanism.

And last, the concern is over the availability of a needed service or good – at times life-sustaining service or good – to those who can’t pay the price or pay it under undue hardship.  Is there a moral obligation by society to make those types of goods and services – from housing and food to medical care or education – is available to all regardless of their ability to pay?  The mental construct promoted by this blog, federation theory, holds that there is such an obligation – a moral obligation.  In some cases, such rationing means some will not attain the asset.

This last question is currently a concern being debated.  Under the rubric of education, does everyone have an equal right to have access to fast internet service?  This is in terms of the consumer and the provider of information online.  There is a new policy – as of yesterday – that places such access under a threat; that is, the current regulatory board – the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) – that polices this service, yesterday eliminated what is known as “net neutrality.” 

Without this neutrality, large corporations, such as Comcast, can pay to jump the traffic lines on the web “highway.”  By doing so, these companies can sell advantaged payers, such as Facebook, access that allows for faster internet interface than those who cannot pay such fees.  The latter could and probably will be relatively small, startup businesses or other providers of information not able to pay.  This renders these deep-pocket payers having a significant upper-hand in getting their online offerings to the consumer. 

There are technicalities involved with this debate that this writer is not knowledgeable enough to totally explain.  But he knows enough to know that it is a “line” problem and one, that up till now, had to do with what is considered a public service (like TSA) or utility.  As such, it was to be – under Obama supported provision – provided to all equally – hence the title, net neutrality.  The writer also knows that the overall concern is that by changing the relevant regulations, equal treatment will be potentially affected.

Here is another development concerning lines.  One place that lines are noticeable is doctors’ offices.  According to Sandel, some are suggesting that a service to avoid such waits in waiting rooms is to establish a concierge type service.  For example, what if a person is willing to pay from $1,500 to $25,000 a year so that on a 24 hour-a-day basis that person has a medical doctor available?  No waiting. 

Is this moral?  It assigns, to some degree, a limited asset, medical care, away from general access, lowering the supply for those who cannot or will not pay this premium.  With a lower supply, the price of medical care rises for those patients.  Health care is an essential, and such a plan raises a moral concern. 

Is this concierge service more efficient?  Yes, but other problems are either created, enlarged, and/or maintained and, if such a service becomes common place, it can even become potentially fatal for some.

But that is getting a bit more tragic than is the case today.  So, a more humorist take on this topic is a good way to end this posting.  As talented humorists can find humor in such aspects of life.  This posting leaves the reader with such an account. 

It is Sandel describing a Larry David’s plan to avoid a line problem and it has to do with highway traffic.  In the 1980s, fast lanes were introduced.  Those “car pool” lanes were to encourage car pooling and to help ease traffic in most other lanes of a given highway such as an interstate.

Here is the description:

Solo drivers caught using the car pool lanes faced hefty fines.  Some put blow-up dolls in the passenger seat in hopes of fooling the highway patrol.  In an episode of the television comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David comes up with an ingenious way of buying access to the carpool lane:  faced with heavy freeway traffic on route to an LA Dodgers baseball game, he hires a prostitute – not to have sex but to ride in his car on the way to the stadium.  Sure enough, the quick ride in the carpool lane gets him there in time for the first pitch.[2]

Does this represent a moral concern?  David’s character is by-passing the intent of the law, but he gets points for innovation.  Never say there is no humor in all cases of “immorality,”

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[1] Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy:  The Moral Limits of Markets (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012).

[2] Ibid., 20.

I “KNOW” WHAT I KNOW?

This blog has addressed the challenge of trying to change curriculum, especially if the change is transformative.  This seemed appropriate since what the basic message of this blog is:  civics education needs to make such a change.  It needs to shift from a curriculum that counts on the natural rights construct to guide its content to one that counts on federation theory.

          The postings that are dedicated to this topic of change, transcend the civics education angle and attempt to look at change and change theory for their own sake.  A recurring message of those postings is to point out how difficult it is to institute change that sticks. 

One of the insights that those postings share is how people in general, as they interact with their environment, develop theories concerning what that environment is and what it should be.  That is, people develop theories-in-use and espoused theories.

This blog has reported on this distinction; and as way of a reminder, the difference between these two mental representations is that what is espoused corresponds with the ideals a person holds to be proper and preferable.  It is those values and goals one holds as desirable at a time removed from the actual implementation of those values and goals.

In distinction to that is a theory-in-use.  This other theory is the dominant beliefs one holds when it comes time to act.  That is, it consists of one’s view of reality and one’s, including oftentimes unaccounted for, emotions.[1] Chris Argyris and Donald A. Shon present a model for organizational planning and action. In that model, they distinguish between “espoused theory” and “theory-in-use.”

For example, let us say an organization decides to perform an activity that will be held initially with some disfavor by the pupil, client, or customer population the organization serves. Those promoting the activity believe that in the long run this action will be best for their charges despite the short-term annoyances or even engendered hatred for what is going to be implemented. The staff commits to it and each person knows that there will be a negative response. Yet, as soon as the negativity springs up, the staff caves-in and gives up on the plan. 

This surrender does not necessarily mean the staff now thinks the plan is deficient or offending their espoused theories.  It might just be that the realities bring to the fore parts of their theories-in-use they were not aware they had – how much they perceive themselves as likable people.  They didn’t initially lie to their bosses or even to themselves.  They were, at the time of the planning, simply unaware of what was going to be psychologically at stake.

Consequently, the change does not take place.  This is but one source or type of challenge a planned change effort can face.  It is one that in its character has to do with dealing with individuals as opposed to a group or collective.  Each participant has his/her own theories.  A social scientist who provides a helpful bit of theory and research in this area is Timothy D. Wilson.[2] 

He, with Dick Nisbett, have conducted a series of experiments concerning how people opt to make stuff up when confronted with someone asking them why they behaved the way they did, especially if the behavior is generally considered unsavory and/or disappointing.  And the thing is, they believe what they say.  One might determine that this phenomenon demonstrates people who are disengaged from reality.  But it is something else.  It is that these people are tapping into their unconscious thoughts and feelings and, as such, into something of which they are unaware.

Wilson has hit upon how people do not react to their objective environment, but instead to the mental constructs they create.  Wilson describes these constructs as narratives or stories.  This is taking theories-in-use and espoused theories a step further.  Not only are people formulating a theory, but they have a whole story to back it up, to it give context, and its own sense of logic.  When confronted with an incongruent bit of information, the information is apt to being mentally changed or massaged to fit the story.

While skirting reality can lead to an array of problems – especially if the person is unaware of how what is believed is at variance with the truth.  For example, the contextual story can be dysfunctional in how it matches up to reality.  If a person harbors a set of such stories, life can be a succession of dysfunctional choices and these can be topped off with rationalizations that further leads the person to even more hurtful environments as others react negatively. 

Of course, people vary to the degree this is applicable.  In the extreme, these environments will likely include social settings that simply become antagonistic as others sense both the dysfunction and the perceived duplicity the person seems to be practicing.  Often what results are interactions where the person is somewhat bewildered why he/she is so disliked or not fitting in or not being able to arrive at satisfying results. 

Again, that is the extreme, but in general, one seems to run into this kind of reaction every so often.  In less exaggerated cases, Wilson points out a person can “edit” the story so that the story can survive, albeit changed – to at least the degree that allows the person to get over the immediate, obvious disconnect and be able to meet the demands of the moment.

But – and this is this writer’s concern – there is nothing to prevent the person, once the challenge passes, to reestablish the original story.  Generally, it seems, stories have a reason for their existence and it could be those reasons reassert themselves in a person’s life.  And as in the original case, in an unconscious fashion.

What a change agent can derive from this research is, one, that such stories exist in people minds and, two, that they can be addressed and acted upon.  In terms of the first point, change agents need, early on, to become aware of the stories with which he/she will deal.  There are ways to draw them out.  And for the second point, there are strategies that a change agent can conduct that will help the subject become aware of what lurks in his/her mind and is problematic in this fashion.

Wilson provides an example.  In dealing with freshman students in college, he devised a strategy that had them reflect on the story they held as to what it meant to be an effective student – a story that was not accurate and leading not only to less success in their transition to college, but affecting the students’ self-esteem.  Wilson’s group devised a 30-minute intervention that disrupted their theory-in-use.

Here is Wilson’s description:

[W]e gave [students] some facts and some testimonials from other students that suggested that their problems might have a different cause:  namely that it’s hard to learn the ropes in college at first, but that people do better as the college years go on, when they learn to adjust and to study differently than they did in high school and so on.

          This little message that maybe it’s not me, it’s the situation I’m in, and that that can change, seemed to alter people’s stories in ways that had dramatic effects down the road.  Namely, people who got this message, as compared to a control group that did not, got better grades over the next couple of years and were less likely to drop out of college.[3]

This is a very, very hopeful development in terms of implementing change, especially if one considers there has been many subsequent findings to further support this possible approach to implementing change.  It, for one thing, suggests how a change agent should come to know their subjects even before any change plan is drawn up.

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 [1] Chris Argyris and Donald A. Shon, “Evaluating Theories in Action,” in The Planning of Change, Fourth Edition, eds. Warren G. Bennis, Kenneth D. Benne, and Robert Chin (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 108-117.

[2] Timothy D. Wilson, “The Social Psychology Narrative – Or – What Is Social Psychology, Anyway?” in    Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction, ed. John Brockman (New York, NY:  Harper Perennial, 2013), 99-114.

[3] Ibid., 102.