Tradeoffs

Every choice involves tradeoffs, and it would be great if people thought more in terms of tradeoffs and opportunity costs. It would help not just for public policy debates and business decisions, but also for our own lives.

If you spend time or money on one thing, that’s less time or money to spend on something else.

If the government spends time or money on one thing, it has less time or money to spend on something else.

If you fight for one cause, you now have less time to fight for a different cause.

Your right to something may conflict with my right to something else. For instance, if we’re neighbors, your right to play loud and annoying music conflicts with my right to peace and quiet. Many other rights similarly can come into conflict.

Many choices are not zero-sum. But with every choice, there are still tradeoffs. Time, money, and energy are limited resources. So it’s good to weigh all the costs and benefits before deciding whether something is really worth it.

Every choice has both benefits and costs. This includes the opportunity cost—the best possible alternative to that decision. Moreover, some actions can hurt some people while helping others, or help in some ways while hurting in others. So don’t just look at the benefits—look at everything.

But make sure to ignore the sunk costs; they’ve already been incurred, whether you pursue that choice or not. And don’t be afraid to change your mind while you’re making a decision.

If you’re looking at non-monetary costs and benefits, how you measure them depends a lot on your own value judgments. So cost-benefit analysis isn’t just a distant, spreadsheet-like exercise just for economists—it’s good practice for everyone.

Ultimately, cost-benefit analysis is about taking into account the full impact of your decisions. It’s about rational decision-making. And it’s about choosing to live the best possible life for yourself.

I also think our public policy debates would be improved if politicians had more freedom to talk about costs as well as benefits. For instance, politicians seem too hesitant to propose broad-based tax increases, and the shared responsibility that goes along with that. Instead, some conservative politicians promise tax cuts for everyone (and especially the rich), and some liberal politicians promise to raise taxes only for a handful of distant rich people. In other words, benefits for us and costs for them. This may be partly because too many voters want to think only about benefits and not about the costs that go along with those benefits.

But if we want better government, we all need to take responsibility for it. And that includes participating more in government and society, helping hold the government accountable, and yes, being open to paying higher taxes when it makes sense. Ultimately, we won’t get the benefits of better public services without paying for it.

Tradeoffs are everywhere. They’re embedded in every decision, and the sooner they become a bigger part of everyday discourse, the better.

General Education Is One Of Democracy's Best Defenses

Here's the conclusion of Harvard's report General Education in a Free Society, which was published in 1945 -- right after the end of World War II:

"General education is the sole means by which communities can protect themselves from the ill effects of overrapid change. For its concern is with what is the same throughout all changes and with the very process of change itself and the techniques of taking account of it. Political trends and upheavals naturally engage our attention to the neglect perhaps of wider and deeper changes. The coming of steam was a larger event in human history than all but the greatest changes in government, larger not as a material event only but in the spiritual transformations it is still inducing. With it man began to inhabit his planet as a planet. Increased physical mobility has naturally increased the scale of wars, which is a reminder that danger is inseparable from power. The press, radio, photography, television our progressive disembodiment - and indeed all increased means of mass communication have their dangers too. Propaganda, which is their political aspect, has attracted perhaps more than its share of critical attention. Advertisement has received some share, but chiefly in its quality of a potential threat to the consumer's judgment. More dangerous, because more general and because it threatens the spirit rather than the pocket, is the degradation which language undergoes when the greatest words are most often met in servitude to mean or trivial purposes. 'In a world of strife, there is peace in beer.' That slogan was no invention of a satirist. It adorned many a newspaper in the days before Pearl Harbor and is but one example, less harmful through its very fatuousness, of the modes of attack to which mass communications expose standards in all fields. Against them we can only oppose general education at all levels. With such possibilities in mind we do well to remember Hector's words in Troilus and Cresslda:

"The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure.

"Or, as Poor Richard had it, 'He that is secure is not safe.'

"Such dangers, however, are a spur to a widened and livelier sense of responsibility, individual and collective. Enlargement of the common concern is indeed the distinctive character of our age. Not very long ago the mass of mankind could and did leave peacemaking, for example, to statesmen. Today most people feel some of its weight on their shoulders. Even one generation back, how other people lived was not their business; but all men are neighbors now. Among and beyond all the local and personal motives which drive men to pursue education, this budding collective responsibility year by year grows in power. And as it grows it profoundly influences some immediate motives. The desire to get on in the world or to advance the status of the workers, the two chief drives which have animated out-of-school education hitherto, are being transformed by it into wider interests far more favorable both to growth in democracy and to the final causes for which society itself is only a means. 'War is the great educator,' as enemy propagandists have said, though hardly with this in mind. It has shown us that in technical instruction we have been sadly unambitious and unenterprising. It has shown us equally that in general education the strongest incentive comes from the whole man's awareness of his share in the common fate, of his part in the joint undertaking,"