Drone:\u00a0 Hey! I\u2019m just trying to make a living.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like I\u2019m killing or robbing you.\u00a0 I\u2019m just exercising my rights to try to sell you something.\u00a0 It\u2019s a free country and your telephone number is listed, so what\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n
Me: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sigh\u2026 never mind.\u00a0 I\u2019m hanging up now.<\/p>\n
Drone:\u00a0 Thanks for wasting my time with your stupid question!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Of course, the words and tone exhibited by your drone may be different from mine but the sentiment will be the same \u2013 nobody\u2019s being hurt.\u00a0 But is it true that the drone\u2019s cold call isn\u2019t harming me?\u00a0 The answer is clearly no.\u00a0 Even when I decline to answer, the telemarketing intrusion kills a portion of my time that could have been spent on something more enjoyable or productive.\u00a0 It robs me of concentration; disrupting my thoughts and actions.\u00a0 It also wastes valuable bandwidth that could be used on all sorts of better things, like emergency calls, long enjoyable conversations between friends, and so.\u00a0 Leaving the cellphone off or unattended fixes these problems by running the risk of missing important calls and depriving one of the enjoyment that cellphone brings.\u00a0 In short, these telemarketing calls exact a tangible cost from the receiver, even if that cost can\u2019t be precisely monetized.<\/p>\n In the most extreme case, where every telemarketer calls everyone in a single area code, there is even the possibility of a denial of service attack that would put people\u2019s lives at risk.\u00a0 So, even though it may be a free country, the actions of these marketing drones aren\u2019t free of what economists call negative externalities.<\/p>\n Recently, I escaped these costs, ever so briefly, by journeying south of the equator to visit family in Peru.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I landed in a collective economic situation that had an equally high negative outcome: the traffic of Lima.\u00a0 In case you\u2019ve never had the (bad) chance to experience this, hardly any main avenue or road is absent bumper-to-bumper traffic at almost all hours.\u00a0 The skill and bravery exhibited by the average driver is as epic as the congestion is dense.\u00a0 Crisscrossing cars narrowly missing each other; horns honking at irregular intervals; drivers on motorcycles weaving between lanes \u2013 these are the common road motifs.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth considering how this situation has come about.\u00a0 The average motorist clearly is working under two basic rules.\u00a0 First, he needs to get somewhere in the least amount of time; after all his time is valuable. \u00a0Second, his fellow drivers are working at cross purposes to him, since they are obviously trying to get where they are going as fast as possible as well. \u00a0Therefore, he can only trust himself and must drive in a dog-eat-dog fashion.\u00a0 As a result, each driver is willing to break lane discipline at a drop of a hat, cross multiple lines of traffic to make a sudden turn right turn from the far most left lane, and look for any way to get from here to there without regard to the effect his actions have on those around him.<\/p>\n There is a prisoners-dilemma dimension to this whole scenario.\u00a0 Each motorist can choose to cooperate or to betray his fellows.\u00a0 Cooperation would entail politeness, sharing of the road, and allowing others to get in front \u2013 all at the expense of a slightly longer commute.\u00a0 Betrayal would entail ruthlessly cutting other drivers off to get ahead, abruptly changing lanes to jockey for position, and other assorted chicanery \u2013 all for the benefit of making the commute short.\u00a0 Of course, if all the drivers could be convinced to cooperate then the payout for each would not be as great as it would be for only one betrayal, but it would be much better than if all of them resort to the \u2018every man for himself\u2019 approach. A hypothetical payout table for such a scenario illustrates the point.<\/p>\n In both cases, cellphone telemarketing and congested traffic, the lack of awareness of how one\u2019s actions lead to negative externalities for others, leads to what economists call the tragedy of the commons<\/a>.\u00a0 The Wikipedia article summarizes the tragedy of the commons as:<\/p>\n All in all, this isn\u2019t a bad description.\u00a0 It does lack in one important way.\u00a0 The individual users do act independently but not in their own self-interest.\u00a0 Rather they act in what they locally perceive as their best interest \u2013 as if all other users are somehow stupider than they are.\u00a0 As a result, they betray not only all the other users but their own best interest as well.\u00a0 And the truly sad part of this realization is that it isn\u2019t clear at all how to improve the situation without properly educating and persuasively arguing for cooperation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Talking-with-Telemarketers.png\")
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